The Mystery of the Copper Scroll of Qumran
Page 40
21. André Dupont-Sommer, ‘Les Rouleaux de Cuivre Trouvé a Qoumran’, Revue de L’histoire des Religions 151 (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1957); Bargil Pixner, ‘Unravelling the Copper Scroll Code: A Study of the Topography of 3Q15’, Revue de Qumran 11 (Paris: Éditions Letouzey et Ané, 1983); Stephen Goranson, ‘Sectarianism, Geography, and the Copper Scroll’, Journal of Jewish Studies 43 (London: Oxford Center for Hebrew and Jewish Studies, 1992).
22. J. F. Elwolde, ‘3Q15: Its Linguistic Affiliation, with Lexicographical Comments’, International Symposium on the Copper Scroll, Manchester–Sheffield Centre for Dead Sea Scroll Research, 1996; J. Lefkovits, ‘The Copper Scroll Treasure: Fact or Fiction – The Abbreviations KK vs KKRYN’, International Symposium on the Copper Scroll, Manchester–Sheffield Centre for Dead Sea Scroll Research, 1996.
23. In Chapter 3, I include comments from Dr Rosalie David, Reader and Keeper of Egyptology at The Manchester Museum, on the peculiarity of the numbering system used in the Copper Scroll.
CHAPTER 3 METALLURGY AND METROLOGY
1. There were two systems of measuring length in use in ancient Israel. The ordinary cubit (ammah) – the length of a man’s elbow to his second knuckle – was equal to 45.8cm and the large cubit measured 52.5cm. Geoffrey Wigoder (ed.), The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia (New York: Facts on File, 1992).
2. The main sources of gold in the ancient Middle East were in the regions below Thebes, in Egypt, stretching south to lower Nubia and east to the Sudan desert. The earliest forms of gold were found pre-3000 BCE in alluvial beds and were later mined from veins in quartz rock. Gold from these sources, in its uncombined form, was simply beaten into the desired shape. Combined ores were crushed into fine particles, separated by washing and, as heating technology improved, melted and refined in clay cupolas with the assistance of air blown onto the molten metal. After about 1300 BCE ‘Ketem’ gold began to be imported from Asia.
Silver, which does not normally occur in an uncombined state in the Middle East, was much rarer than gold up until about 1300 BCE, having a value approximately twice that of gold. Examples of silver objects that have been found were usually associated with gold sources, or obtained by separation from Galena (lead sulphide) ores containing silver mined in the eastern desert in southern Egypt.
Although gold and silver are still relatively valuable materials today, with gold fluctuating in price between $280 and $500 an ounce between 1985 and 1998, and silver currently around $6 an ounce, with the protracted difficulties of refining in ancient times they were rare commodities of extremely high value.
3. Giulio Morteani and Jeremy P. Northover (eds.), ‘Pre-historic Gold in Europe: Mines Metallurgy and Manufacture’, Proceedings of the NATO Advanced Research Workshop on Prehistoric Gold in Europe, Seeon, Germany, 1993, published by Dordrecht Kluwer Academic, 1995; C. H .V. Sutherland, Gold: Its Beauty, Power and Allure (London: Thames & Hudson, 1959); Timothy Green, The World of Gold (London: Rosendale Press, 1993).
4. Silver was more valuable than gold in the Egyptian New Kingdom period (from 1550 BCE), in line with their relative availabilities of 2:1 in favour of gold. This ratio was slowly reversed, reaching approximate parity around 900 BCE, from which time silver became more abundant than gold.
5. Michael O. Wise, ‘David J. Wilmot and the Copper Scroll’, at the International Symposium on the Copper Scroll, Manchester–Sheffield Centre for Dead Sea Scrolls Research, 1996.
6. Ibid. All the examples of engraving on copper, cited by Michael Wise, on examination turn out to be engravings on bronze. The reference to the Medinet Habu find as being copper is incorrect. It is a bronze tablet measuring approximately 30cm square and is in the possession of the Cairo Museum.
7. One of the best translations of the Harris Papyrus was done by the great pioneering archaeologist, James Henry Breasted. Born in Rockford, Illinois, in 1865, he became the first Professor in America of a ‘Chair of Egyptian’ at Chicago University and was called ‘one of the prophets’ by J. D. Rockefeller, who was later to endow the Rockefeller Museum in Jerusalem.
8. James Henry Breasted, Ancient Records of Egypt, Vol. IV (New York: Russell & Russell, 1912).
9. All references to ‘brass’ in the Old Testament, and there are many, are erroneous. They should be read as ‘bronze’. Brass was not in use until Roman times.
10. There are numerous examples of pharaohs taking over their predecessors goods, by right and by plunder, and taking over tomb furnishings and materials, as well as building structures. A good example is Haremhab who usurped many of Tutankhamun’s possessions and monuments. See, for example, Peter A. Clayton, Chronicle of the Pharaohs (London: Thames & Hudson, 1998).
11. A General Guide to the Egyptian Collections in the British Museum (London: British Museum Publications, 1975).
12. H. Garland and C. O. Bannister, Ancient Egyptian Metallurgy (London: Charles Griffen & Co., 1926).
13. Mummification, involving removal of internal organs and embalming to preserve the dead body, was common amongst Egyptian royalty and upper classes from the Old Kingdom (c.2550 BCE) down to the Greco-Roman period (332 BCE–300 CE).
14. Garland and Bannister, Ancient Egyptian Metallurgy.
15. In addition to the restoration work and analyses of the scroll carried out by Electricité de France, Paris, in the early 1990s, splinters of copper from the scroll were, according to P. Kyle McCarter of Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, sent for analysis to Harvard University prior to 1955. The results showed some residual tin and 99.9 per cent copper. The remaining splinters are still in the Freer Gallery, Washington, D.C. P. Kyle McCarter, ‘The Anomalous Spelling of the Copper Scroll’, The Dead Sea Scrolls – Fifty Years After Their Discovery: Proceedings of the Jerusalem Congress, July 20–25, 1997 (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society in cooperation with The Shrine of the Book, Israel Museum, 2000). See also Albert Wolters, The Copper Scroll: Overview: Text and Translation (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1960); D. Brizemeure and N. Lacoudre, ‘EDF et le Rouleau de Cuivre (3Q15)’, International Symposium on the Copper Scroll, Manchester–Sheffield Centre for Dead Sea Scrolls Research, 1996. (http://www.edf.fr/html/en/mag/mmorte/intro.htm). See also W. V. Davies, Catalogue of Egyptian Antiquities in the British Museum – Tools and Weapons I: Axes (London: British Museum Publications, 1987).
16. Wolters, The Copper Scroll: Overview, Text and Translation.
17. Ian Shaw and Paul Nicholson, The British Museum Dictionary of Ancient Egypt (London: Published for the Trustees of the British Museum by British Museum Press, c.1995)
18. Breasted, Ancient Records of Egypt, Vol. IV. Interestingly the tomb of Rekhmire, chief minister to Tutmoses III, c.1450 BCE, shows a slab of what appears to be copper being carried on the shoulder of a worker, and its size equates to the proportions of oxhide copper slabs seen illustrated on the sides of Egyptian coffins. This dimensional proportion is approximately 3:8; the same as that of individual sections of the Copper Scroll (Allesandra Nibbi, ‘The Oxhide Ingot and the Hand Bellows Pot of Middle Kingdom Egypt’, Proceedings of the First International Conference on Ancient Egyptian Mining and Metallurgy Conservation of Metallic Artifacts, Cairo, 1995).
19. Correspondence between Dr Rosalie David and the author, 21 December 1998–18 January 1999. She is now a Professor at Manchester University.
20. There is evidence at Qumran that the inhabitants had developed skills in leather-working and pottery making, so they could well have adapted these skills to metalworking.
CHAPTER 4 THE HEBREW TRIBES AND EGYPT
1. The Judaean Essene movement during the second century BCE to the first century CE is described by Josephus, Pliny the Elder and Philo as being made up of static and mobile groupings, perhaps numbering 4,000 in all at any one time. Their testimony never indicates that the Essenes were recruited from anything other than Jews of Hebrew stock.
2. Genesis 12:10 ‘There was a famine in the land, and Abram went down to Egypt to sojourn there, for the fa
mine was severe in the land.’
Genesis 37:23–24, 28 ‘When Joseph came up to his brothers, they stripped Joseph of his tunic, the ornamented tunic that he was wearing and took him and cast him into the pit. The pit was empty; there was no water in it.…When Midianite traders passed by, they pulled Joseph up out of the pit. They sold Joseph for twenty pieces of silver to the Ishmaelites, who brought Joseph to Egypt.’
Genesis 42:3 ‘So ten of Joseph’s brothers went down to get grain rations in Egypt…’
Genesis 46:6 ‘…and they took along their livestock and the wealth that they had amassed in the land of Canaan. Thus Jacob and all his off-spring with him came to Egypt.’
Jeremiah 43:5–7 ‘But Johanan the son of Kareah, and all the captains of the forces, took all the remnant of Judah, that were returned from all nations whither they had been driven, to dwell in the land of Judah; even men, and women, and children, and the king’s daughters, and every person that Nebuzar adan the captain of the guard had left with Gedaliah the son of Ahikam, the son of Shaphan, and Jeremiah the prophet, and Baruch the son of Neriah. So they came into the land of Egypt: for they obeyed not the voice of the Lord. Thus came they even to Tahpanhes.’
Matthew 2:13 ‘And when they were departed, behold, the angel of the Lord appeareth to Joseph in a dream, saying, “Arise, and take the young child [Jesus] and his mother, and flee into Egypt, and be thou there until I bring thee word; for Herod shall seek the young child to destroy him.”’
3. The concept of Abraham as the founder of monotheism is based on the Biblical story that God first appeared to him in a vision and promised that his descendants would inherit the lands from the river of Egypt to the Euphrates. The dating of Abraham by various authorities varies from c.1900 to 1400 BCE, and the evidence for my preference of c.1500 BCE is discussed in Chapter 7. He offered his son, Isaac, as a sacrifice to God, reputedly on a site now known as the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem. Abraham’s other son, Ishmael, is believed to be the father of the Muslims.
4. As his father’s favourite son, Joseph aroused his brothers’ jealousy and was sold by them to Ishmaelite traders, who in turn sold him into slavery in Egypt, around 1350 BCE. A slave in the house of Potiphar, Pharaoh’s captain of the guard, he prospered until Potiphar’s wife took a fancy to him. When Joseph rejected her sexual overtures, she denounced him to her husband who had him thrown into prison. It was while in prison that Joseph’s reputation as an interpreter of dreams came to the attention of Pharaoh.
5. The most notable of the early commentators on the Old Testament, who all held the belief that Moses was educated as an Egyptian and held high rank in that country, were:
a) Manetho – a third century BCE Egyptian author and high priest of Heliopolis
b) Philo Judaeus – a first century BCE Jewish writer and philosopher
c) Flavius Josephus – a first century CE authoritative Jewish writer
d) Justin Martyr – a second century Father of the early Christian Church.
6. Josef Popper-Linkeus, Der Sohn des Konigs von Egypten. Phantasieen eines Realisten (Leipzig: Carl Reisner, 1899).
7. Sigmund Freud, Moses and Monotheism (London: The Hogarth Press, 1951).
Sigmund Freud, as well as being the father of psychoanalysis, had an abiding interest in ancient religions and archaeology, particularly Egyptian. In 1931 he wrote a study on the origins of Moses, entitled Moses and Monotheism, which attracted considerable criticism and reprobation, largely because he portrayed a first Moses as having been murdered by the Hebrews and the arrival of a second Moses. The work was heavily influenced by his own angst over his Jewish parentage and feelings of guilt about his own nonconformity. Interest in the original concept of Egypt and monotheism died away, submerged in the controversy engendered by Freud’s extreme interpretation. See also Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, Freud’s Moses (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991).
A major collection of Freud’s papers and manuscripts are housed in the Library of Congress, Washington DC. His passion for collecting ancient relics can be seen in his family house at 20 Maresfield Gardens, Hampstead, London, which is open to the public, and still contains many of the personal possessions he lived and worked amongst.
8. Although this part of book was written before the release of the Jeffrey Katzenberg, Dream Works SKG, animated film version of the life of Moses, Prince of Egypt, it is apparent that the film also challenges the conventional view of the origins of Moses.
9. Martin Noth, Exodus: A Commentary (London: SCM Press, 1962).
10. Eberhard Otto, Die Biographischen Inschriften der Agyptischen Spatzeit (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1954).
11. Siegfried Morenz, Egyptian Religion (Ithica, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1994).
12. R. T. Rundle Clark, Myth and Symbol in Ancient Egypt (London: Thames & Hudson, 1978).
13. Alfred Sendrey, Music in Ancient Israel (New York: Philosophical Library, 1969).
14. Ibid.
15. Paul Goodman, History of the Jews (London: Office of the Chief Rabbi, 1941).
16. Julius Wellhausen, Prolegomena zur Geschichte Israels (Edinburgh: A. & C. Black, 1885). Julius Wellhausen was a nineteenth century scholar who identified at least four different authors of the Pentatuech, to whom he assigned the letters: J–Jaweh, c.950 BCE, by Judaean sources; E–Elohim, c.850 BCE, Ephraim sources; D–Deuteronomy, c.640 BCE; P–Priestly, c.550 BCE, priestly sources.
17. When Moses was banished from Court he heads for the land of Midian, somewhere in north-west Arabia, and there marries the daughter, Zipporah, of a Midianite priest (Exodus 2). He has a son by her who is named Gershom – alluding to the fact that Moses is ‘a stranger in a strange land’, and referring to the land of Goshen in Egypt, where foreigners traditionally settled.
In the Bible there is serious confusion as to who Moses married in Midian. Moses’ fatherin-law is variously given as ‘Reuel’, a Midianite, in Exodus 2:18; as ‘Jethro’ in Exodus 3:1; as ‘Raguel’ in Numbers 10:29; and ‘Hobab’ in Judges 4:11.
18. The Bible (Exodus 2:16) confirms that it was a Bedouin custom for daughters of the tribe to look after the flocks.
19. Thomas Bradshaw, The Whole Genuine Works of Flavius Josephus (London: Alex Hogg, 1792).
20. Ibid.
21. Sir Ernest Alfred Wallis Budge, The Mummy: A Handbook of Egyptian Funerary Archaeology (London: Constable, 1989).
22. Exodus 4:24–26. ‘At a night encampment on the way, The Lord encountered him and sought to kill him [Moses]. So Zipporah took a flint and cut off her son’s foreskin, and touched his legs with it, saying, “You are truly a bridegroom of blood to me!” And when He let him alone, she added, “A bridegroom of blood because of the circumcision.”’
23. Charles Weiss, The Journal of Sex Research, (Mount Vernon, IA: Society for the Scientific Study of Sex, July 1966); Julian Morgenstern, Hebrew Union College Annual (Cincinnati: Students of the Hebrew Union College, 1963).
24. Sir Ernest Alfred Wallis Budge, The Papyrus of Ani (Avenel, N.J.: Gramercy Books, 1995).
25. Geoffrey Thorndike Martin, The Royal Tombs of El-Amarna – I: The Objects (London: Egypt Exploration Society, 1974).
26. To trace back to the roots of why circumcision was practised at all in Egypt, we need to look at the ancient creation stories of Egypt, to the Papyrus of Ani, written during the Eighteenth Dynasty, in the fourteenth century BCE. In it we find that Re, the creator God, initiated the process of bringing other beings into existence:
It is the blood that descended from the phallus of Re
After he proceeded to circumcise himself,
And these gods are those who came into being after him.
This was the myth of how Re, or Ra, brought other gods into existence, from the droplets of blood which came forth.
27. Nicholas de Lange, Atlas of the Jewish World (Oxford: Phaidon, 1984).
28. Bruce M. Metzger and Michael D. Coogan, The Oxford Companion to the Bible (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993).
&nbs
p; 29. Pat Alexander, ed., The Lion Encyclopedia of the Bible (Berkhamsted: Lion Publishing, 1994).
30. Irving M. Zeitlin, Ancient Judaism (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1984).
31. John W. Rogerson, Atlas of the Bible (New York: Facts on File Publications, 1991).
32. Morenz, Egyptian Religion.
33. Other quotes from Zeitlin underline the lack of influence of Canaan on the Hebrews:
‘Thus, there appears to be no resemblance whatsoever between this form of social organization (primitive democracy) and that of the Canaanites which was feudal and hierarchical.’ ‘…no evidence exists of a Canaanite-Israelite syncretism in technology and social organization’, ‘…where the primeval legends of Genesis are concerned, there is no apparent Canaanite influence’. Zeitlin, Ancient Judaism.
34. ‘…Israelite military technology was quite different from that of the Canaanites’ (Yehezkel Kaufman, Toledot Ha-emunah Hayisraelit (Jerusalem: The Bialik Institute and Devir, 1971)); ‘…prophecy of the word, which is so distinctive a feature of Israel, was non-existent in Canaan’ (John Gray, The Legacy of Canaan: The Ras Shamra Texts and Their Relevance to the Old Testament (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1965)).
35. Richard Elliott Friedman, Who Wrote the Bible? (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1997); Wellhausen, Prolegomena zur Geschichte Israels.
36. Pope Pius XII referred to the writers of the Bible as ‘the living and reasonable instrument of the Holy Spirit’. His encyclical, Divinio Afflante Spiritu, ended:
Let the interpreter then, with all care and without neglecting any light derived from recent research, endeavour to determine the peculiar character and circumstances of the sacred writer, the age in which he lived, the sources written or oral to which he had recourse and the forms of expression he employed.
37. John Marco Allegro, The Treasure of the Copper Scroll (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1960).
38. John Marco Allegro, The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1969).