Israel will conduct a major archaeological expedition in search of undiscovered Dead Sea Scrolls, an Israeli Antiquities Authority official has told Associated Press.
Amir Ganor told the news organisation this week that a research team funded by the Israeli Prime Minister’s office would spend the next three years surveying hundreds of caves found in the Judean Desert near the Dead Sea and may even excavate. The team will begin work in December, he said.
It is in that region that the Dead Sea Scrolls – the world’s oldest Biblical manuscripts – were found in 1947. The survey would be the largest in the area in more than 20 years.
The project has apparently been sparked by the appearance of ancient manuscripts on local antiquities markets with looters believed to have plundered them from the caves. “We know there are more,” Mr Ganor, who is the director of the IIA’s robbery prevention unit, told AP, referring to as yet unfound scrolls.
Last month, the IIA announced its enforcement teams had recovered a document written on papyrus, dating from the 7th century BC, which had been illicitly looted from a cave in the Judean Desert. The document is the earliest extra-Biblical source to mention Jerusalem in Hebrew writing.
