Newly Discovered Qumran Holding: World Museum Liverpool

March 7, 2019March 15, 2019Posted in Archaeology, artefacts, Ceramics, Other Organic Remains, Pottery, Textiles, UncategorizedTagged Gerald Lankaster Harding, Isabella Bossolino, John Henry "Harry" Iliffe;, Palestine Archaeological Museum;, Sandra Jacobs;, World Museum Liverpool4 Comments

The network team are delighted to report that following on from enquiries made by Joan Taylor, of the Museums of Liverpool, the curator Ashley Cooke found in their collections a Dead Sea Scroll jar and lid, and also linen. These had been purchased on 8 May, 1951 by the Liverpool Public Museums from the Palestine Archaeological Museum (represented by Gerald Lankaster Harding) for the sum of £50.00. At that time the curator in Liverpool was British archaeologist, John Henry ‘Harry’ Iliffe (1903-1960), whose museum career included posts as head of Classical collections at the Royal Ontario Museum of Archaeology, Toronto (1927-1931); the first keeper of the Palestine Archaeological Museum, now the Rockefeller Museum, in Jerusalem (1931-1948); and Director of Museums in Liverpool (1948-1959).

Kindly note that the above preliminary images, taken by Sandra Jacobs, include the exterior profile of the jar, and are copyrighted by the Network for the Study of Dispersed Qumran Cave Artefacts and Archives. These photographs may not be used by others for publication purposes. We are currently trying to identify the precise textile, but clearly it is from Qumran Cave 1Q:

We extremely grateful to Dr Ashley Cooke (featured in the main post photograph) for making the archival correspondence available to the network team to verify the authenticity of this acquisition, as well as his hospitality at the Museum’s off-site warehouse when Isabella Bossolino and Sandra Jacobs arrived from London to photograph and draw the jar and lid.

Off-site storage, World Museums Liverpool.

Joan Taylor, ‘Finding Qumran Cave 1Q Artefacts’: Palestine Exploration Fund and Anglo-Israel Archaeological Society joint lecture, at the British Museum, 8 March 2018

March 9, 2018July 5, 2018Posted in Archaeology, Archives & Collections, artefacts, Other Organic Remains, Photographs, Pottery, TextilesLeave a comment

On 8 March, 2018, Joan Taylor gave a lecture in London on the quest to find Qumran Cave 1Q artefacts that have been dispersed around the world, and also considered some of the mysterious unprovenanced jars in various collections. Held in the Clore Education Centre of the British Museum, the lecture attracted over 200 people and led to some interesting discussions afterwards. The Network thanks the Palestine Exploration Fund and the Anglo-Israel Archaeological Society for their interest in our work, now published in the Palestine Exploration Quarterly.

Replica Jars at the Australian Institute of Archaeology

February 20, 2017July 5, 2018Posted in Archives & Collections, Ceramics, Other Organic RemainsTagged Christopher Davey; Mick Wright; string; replica jar;Leave a comment

On February 20th, 2017, Christopher Davey, of the Australian Institute of Archaeology, Melbourne, hosted a visit from Joan Taylor, to review materials in the archive of G. R. H. (Mick) Wright. While the Wright archive did not provide materials on the caves, Dr Davey has very generously supplied his collection of photographs taken in 1974, and they can be accessed in our photographic database here in low-resolution. To obtain high quality images, please be in touch with him at director@aiarch.org.au.

While at the institute, the opportunity was taken to undertake some experimental archaeology, using the replica 1Q scroll jars and lids there. These replica jars are found in a variety of places, and their production could be an essay in itself, but thus far we have encountered them in Manchester Museum and in private collections. If anyone has further details about them do get in touch with us.

The interest with the replica jars is that they provided a chance for experimenting on how the lids might have been tied on (IF they were tied at all), when most of the jars had no handles. The knob on top of the lids provides an easy means of looping string around it, but where else did such string go? We tried tying the string around the knob and on to the neck, though the replica jars do not have the high neck of the actual 1Q jars and thus the string tended to be unstable. This form of tying still resulted in the lid being able to be lifted a little. We also determined that a tight fit of lid to jar was necessary, which would only be facilitated by having cloth tied to the neck (jar covers), to create a snug casing. A tightly bound jar cover could possibly also then have been used to bind on the lid, with its edges pulled up towards the knob. Textiles could also be used to completely cover the lid, bound on to the neck. It was determined that it would be hard to create a very tight binding of string alone unless it went around the base of the jar, and even this would not be as secure as a fit using cloth laid over the mouth of the jar and tied on to the neck prior to the lid being fitted. Jar covers are therefore an essential part of securing the lid snugly.

String of various kinds has been found in association with the jars in scroll caves, and further examination of this string may enable us to determine whether it might have been used for tying on scroll wrappers, jar covers or the exterior of jars.

DSCN0209 — experiments with string: image copyright Joan Taylor

Just Published by Marcello Fidanzio: The Caves of Qumran

November 21, 2016July 5, 2018Posted in Archaeology, Bibliographies, Caves, Ceramics, Other Organic Remains, ScrollsTagged artefacts, Assemblages, Cave 4Q, Caves, Ceramics, Dating, Judaean Deser, Khirbet Qumran, Manuscripts, Oil Lamps, Phylacteries, Roland de Vaux, Settlement, tefillin, terracotta, textiles, TopographyLeave a comment

The Caves of Qumran

Edited by Marcello Fidanzio, Facoltà di Teologia di Lugano

This volume presents the proceedings of an international conference (Lugano 2014) dedicated entirely to the caves of Qumran. The papers deal with both archaeological and textual issues, comparing the caves in the vicinity of Qumran between themselves and their contents with the other finds in the Dead Sea region. The relationships between the caves and the settlement of Qumran are re-examined and their connections with the regional context are investigated. The original inventory of the materials excavated from the caves by Roland de Vaux is published for the first time in appendix to the volume.

Contents

Foreword
George J. Brooke

Introduction – Available for Download caves-2016-intro-fidanzio
Marcello Fidanzio

Part 1: Topography

1 The Qumran Caves in their Regional Context: A Chronological Review with a Focus on Bar Kokhba Assemblages
Joan E. Taylor

2 Cacher et se cacher à Qumrân : grottes et refuges. Morphologie, fonctions, anthropologie
Jean-Baptiste Humbert

Part 2: Manuscripts
3 The Contents of the Manuscripts from the Caves of Qumran
Florentino García Martínez

4 The Profile and Character of Qumran Cave 4Q: The Community Rule Manuscripts as a Test Case
Charlotte Hempel

5 Scribal Characteristics of the Qumran Scrolls
Emanuel Tov

6 La paléographie des manuscrits de la mer Morte
Emile Puech

Part 3: Other Finds
7 Terracotta Oil Lamps (Roland de Vaux’s Excavations of the Caves)
Jolanta Młynarczyk

8 The Unpublished Textiles from the Qumran Caves 123
Mireille Bélis

9 Miscellaneous Artefacts from the Qumran Caves: An Exploration of their Significance
Dennis Mizzi

10 The Distribution of Tefillin Finds among the Judean Desert Caves
Yonatan Adler

Part 4: Chronology, Functions, Connections
11 When and Why Were Caves Near Qumran and in the Judaean Desert Used?
Mladen Popović

12 The Connection between the Site of Qumran and the Scroll Caves in Light of the Ceramic Evidence
Jodi Magness

13 The Functions of the Caves and the Settlement of Qumran: Reflections on a New Chapter of Qumran Research
Jürgen K. Zangenberg

Part 5: Short Papers
14 The Inscriptional Evidence from Qumran and its Relationship to the Cave 4Q Documents
Sidnie White Crawford

15 The Coins of Khirbet Qumran from the Digs of Roland De Vaux: Returning to Henri Seyrig and Augustus Spijkerman
Bruno Callegher

16 Dating the Scroll Deposits of the Qumran Caves: A Question of Evidence
Gregory L. Doudna

17 History of the “Qumran Caves” in the Iron Age in the Light of the Pottery Evidence
Mariusz Burdajewicz

Appendix
18 Finds from the Qumran Caves: Roland de Vaux’s Inventory of the Excavations (1949–1956)
Marcello Fidanzio and Jean-Baptiste Humbert

Bibliography
Index of Modern Authors
Index of Sites and Place Names

http://www.brill.com/products/book/caves-qumran

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Manchester Reconnaissance Trip

August 14, 2016July 5, 2018Posted in Archives & Collections, Bibliographies, Other Organic Remains, Photographs, QCD Links, Written Memoirs & DocumentsTagged Allegro Qumran Photograph Collection, John Rylands Museum, Manchester University Museum John Rylands Museum, Ronald Reed ArchiveLeave a comment

Initial exploration of the following collections:

The Ronald Reed Archive at the John Rylands Museum, Manchester 11 August 2016, with Elizabeth Gow (Manuscript Curator and Archivist).Visit John Rylands Library Site

Allegro archive in the Manchester University Museum with Collections Access Officer Jamilla Hawa, together with Deputy Head of Collections and Curator of Archaeology Bryan Sitch. These included four boxes of Allegro photographs, largely composed of laminated black and white prints that have previously been made into microfiche images and annotated in the publication by George Brooke and Helen Bond.The Allegro Qumran Photograph Collection: Supplement to the Dead Sea Scrolls on Microfiche (ed. G. Brooke with H.K. Bond; Leiden, New York & Köln, E.J. Brill and IDC, 1996).

Visit Manchester University Museum Main Site