Newly Discovered Qumran Photographs from the 1950s

You can view them here. Or if you want, go directly to the PEQ Flickr page and view the entire set, with labels. With thanks to Eibert Tigchelaar for pointing them out.

Newly Discovered Qumran Photographs from the 1950s: In 1947, the first cave containing manuscripts of the Dead Sea Scrolls was found by Bedouin shepherds, north of an ancient ruin known as Khirbet Qumran near the Dead Sea. Originally known as the ‘Ain Feshkha Cave’, the manuscripts and other artefacts in Qumran Cave 1 (1Q) illuminated both the history of the Biblical text and the variety of thought in early Judaism, and caused an international sensation. The nearby site of Qumran itself was excavated over five seasons from 1951, under the directorship of Father Roland de Vaux, of the École Biblique et Archéologique Française de Jérusalem. De Vaux concluded that this remote and unusual site was occupied by a little-known ‘sect’ of Judaism mentioned by Josephus, Philo, Pliny and Dio Chrysostom: the Essenes. It was suggested that they hid the Dead Sea Scrolls ahead of the Roman army’s arrival in 68 CE.

This set of photographs illustrate a special website feature that is published on the Fund's pages at www.pef.org.uk/qumran/