In my last post I forgot to share something I learned in March — archaeologists recently discovered the first Dead Sea Scroll fragments in 60 years!

The Dead Sea Scrolls are religious manuscripts found in the Judean desert, including the second oldest Biblical manuscripts that we know of. It would be hard to overstate their historical, religious, and linguistic significance.

The original Dead Sea Scrolls were found by three Bedouin shepherds in 1946 and 1947. The site became known as Cave 1 and between 1949 and 1956 eleven caves were discovered, mainly in excavations by the American Schools of Oriental Research.

In 2017 Hebrew University archaeologists discovered a twelfth cave, but the only parchment it contained was blank and there was evidence of looting that occurred in the 1950s.

This brings us to the latest discovery. Two dozen fragments were discovered in the Cave of Horror (where forty skeletons were found in the 1960s). It is believed that Jewish rebels hid there from the Romans during the Bar Kochba revolt of AD 132-136.

The fragments come from Greek translations of the books of Zechariah and Nahum, with only God’s name appearing in Hebrew. Also discovered were a 6,000-year-old skeleton of a child and a 10,000-year-old basket, believed to be the oldest intact basket ever found.

I love this excerpt from “Dead Sea scroll fragments and ‘world’s oldest basket’ found in desert cave”:

“According to one IAA archaeologist, the decision to fully excavate the Cave of Horror was made after she went on a bathroom break during an initial search and discovered a Roman-era sandal, signalling an abundance of unearthed treasures.

“‘I crouched to pee and suddenly I saw something that didn’t look like sand, and I realised it was a sole of a shoe,’ Oriya Amichay told the local Haaretz newspaper. She said her male colleagues would have probably missed it.”

What a discovery to make on your bathroom break!