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Page 4 of 5
The Site
The earliest structure here was an Israelite fortress, abandoned since the 6th century BC. (It is thought that the round cistern in the photo below belonged to it.) The first archaeologists here deduced the site's later dates on the basis of coins. A new complex was founded here, they thought, in the last half of the 2nd century BC. The founding date is now thought to have been between 100 and 50 BC, according to Magness.) As to the end, the Romans conquered and occupied the site in 68 AD while subjugating the first Jewish revolt. The place was in use for a few more years under Roman occupation.
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| Qumran's water supply |
1. The water system. When we climb the tower (the sole structure standing to its original height), we can see numerous cisterns joined by channels. Some of the smaller ones were likely ritual baths. It is a matter of dispute whether the site was connected to the Yahad of the Dead Sea Scrolls, but if it was, we may connect there baths with the practice described in the Manual of Discipline (the sect's "constitution"); we read, "They [the men of injustice] shall not enter the water to partake of the pure Meal of the men of holiness..." (V 13 in Vermes, p. 76); Josephus describes this combination of bathing, followed by eating. (While the site was active, a man named John baptized other Jews about six miles away at the Jordan River.)
Qumran has no spring, and it rains less than 100 mm. per year (four inches, a fifth of what Jerusalem gets). Looking west, however, we see the gorge of Wadi Qumran (enlarge picture, right). Its drainage basin spreads westward in the desert for about three miles. The inhabitants dammed this gorge near its mouth. (Pieces of the dam are visible from within the canyon.) On a good rainy day in the desert, the accumulated water flowed into an aqueduct, the line of which is visible on the north side of the path leading westward from the site. The water filled the cisterns one after another.
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| Ritual bath near refectorium |
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| Crack in another ritual bath |
2. The scriptorium (?). Likewise southeast of the tower is a long narrow windowless chamber, into which things had fallen from the second floor. Among them was an object interpreted to be a narrow plaster table or tables, which could have been used for laying out pieces of parchment before sewing them into a scroll. (Scribes wrote, as said above, with tablets on their laps.) The diggers also found two inkwells here, one with dried ink - a rare find for this country at the time.
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| The Qumran dining hall |
3. The assembly and dining hall. In this passage from Josephus, the Essenes are said to have bathed and then gone into a dining room, where they ate a solemn meal. A day would come, they thought, and soon, when the priestly and the lay Messiahs would join them in this banquet, as preparation for God's great victory over the "sons of darkness." According to those who connect Qumran with the Essenes, this long hall was the room -- and note the ritual bath beside its entrance. (See picture above.) We see a channel from a cistern leading into the room, to keep it clean. There is also a stone dais, on which, perhaps, the priest used to stand to bless the food or conduct the assembly. In a small adjacent chamber, archaeologists found more than a thousand plates, bowls, serving dishes, water vessels, wine flasks and cups, all cracked from the earthquake of 31 BC. In the rebuilding, the part of the room that contained these dishes was sealed off, and so they remained for the archaeologists.
In the Manual of Discipline (1QS), there are many references to an assembly room in columns VI and VII. For example:
"Wherever there are ten men of the Council of the Community there shall not lack a Priest among them. And they shall all sit before him according to their rank and shall be asked their counsel in all things in that order. And when the table has been prepared for eating, and the new wine for drinking, the Priest shall be the first to stretch out his hand to bless the first-fruits of the bread and new wine." (Vermes , p. 77)
Another version of the Manual (1QSa II, 11-22) talks about this common meal as "a liturgical anticipation of the Messianic banquet" (Cross, pp. 88-90).
4. Sacrifice (?) In the open areas of the complex (for example, in the plateau south of the main building) the diggers found carefully buried deposits containing the bones of kosher animals (sheep, goats and cattle, but no poultry). These, thinks Cross, "are the remains of the sacral feasts of the community" (Cross, op. cit., p. 70).
They may have been sacrifices. One may translate a passage in Josephus to read, "they offer sacrifices by themselves" (Antiquities XVIII 1.5). For a discussion, see Cross, pp. 101-102.
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| Inside Cave 4 |
5. The archive (?) From the plateau on the south side of the complex, we can view the entrance to Cave 4. Under the sediment of centuries, the Bedouin here found thousands of fragments, which they sold to the archaeologists for $5.60 per centimeter of writing (.3937 inch). From them scholars have reconstructed parts of some 500 documents. There are regularly spaced holes and horizontal cuts in the walls of the cave, perhaps indicating the placement of shelves. If so, this may have been the library or archive.
Under Jordanian auspices, seven scholars divided the fragments among themselves. For 40 years they had exclusive access, and the rate of publication was extremely slow. These years included the Arab-Israeli war of 1967, when de facto control passed from Jordan to Israel. In late 1991 the Biblical Archaeological Society obtained photographs of the unpublished fragments and, against the will of the Israel Antiquities Authority, published them. For the Society's view of this controversy, see Shanks,ed. pp. xxiv-xxxiii.
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| The Qumran cemetery |
7. The cemetery. Just east of the main building is the cemetery, which contains more than 1100 graves. They are neatly arranged in rows, a fact which suggests strong organization. Of the 46 that have been excavated, all except three on the upper plateau were the graves of men. Those on the lower levels are Beduin graves from recent centuries.
Each grave on the upper plateau is marked by an oblong heap of small stones, surrounded by a row of larger unhewn stones, with still larger stones standing upright at either end. The head is on the south side. Since the apocryphal Book of Enoch (of major importance to the Essenes) has the Messiah arriving from the north, the idea may have been that the dead Sons of Light would rise from their graves and greet him. The heaps of stones may reflect general Jewish practice at the time: when people were buried in the earth (and not in a family cave-tomb), it would have been important to mark the grave so that the living would not unwittingly walk over it, an act that would render them ritually impure (cf. Luke 11:44 . Perhaps this is behind the Jewish custom of placing a stone on the grave.
8. If the Essenes lived here, then where exactly? The ruins do not suggest living quarters, rather the functional rooms and workshops of a community center. Some have thought the Essenes lived in huts on the esplanade south of the main building. Yet a channel from a cistern leads to it, raising the possibility that they irrigated this area. Moreover, there are no bases of tents or huts, as one would expect after a hundred years or so of habitation. They may have lived in caves, like some in which scrolls were found. If so, then they were inaugurating the system of the laura followed in this desert by Christian monks six centuries later: the monks lived in caves and came on paths (laurae) to a central monastery for instruction and supplies. However, no traces of paths have been found: if they existed, one would expect to find them in this rain-scarce climate, as one does find paths, for example, at Masada.
At Ein Feshka, about two miles south on lower ground, there are briny springs. Here archaeologists found agricultural installations that fit the time-frame of Qumran.
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