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Imagine a village whose fragile brick walls enclosed an area of only 80 x 100 meters and a population that probably never rose above 250. Not very thrilling, right? Well, it depends on the village. . .

Qumran is rich in mystery for many reasons. First off, we don't know the original name of the place. Qumran is a relatively modern name whose etymology is not 100% certain. The name of the village at the time of the writing of the Dead Sea Scrolls some 2,000 years ago remains unknown. Recent scholarship has added a wealth of speculation about who lived here, what they did and what they believed. Last, but not least, the man who excavated the site nearly 50 years ago never published a final report of what he found. In short, there's an enormous wealth of information about Qumran that we don't know.

The comments and hearsay of Roman historians about the place only enhance the ancient mystery of the place. Here's what the Roman historian Pliny had to say about Qumran:

On the west side of the Dead Sea, but out of range of the noxious exhalations of the coast, is the solitary tribe of the Essenes, which is remarkable beyond all the other tribes in the whole world, as it has no women and has renounced all sexual desire, has no money, and has only palm trees for company. Day by day the throng of refugees is recruited to an equal number by numerous successions of personnel tired of life and driven there by ways of fortune to adopt their manners. Thus, through thousands of ages (incredible to relate) a race in which no one is born lives on forever; so prolific for their advantage is other men's weariness of life.

Sounds a little bit like the French Foreign Legion, doesn't it? An endless stream of lonely men, tired of life, and ready to renounce most worldly pleasures to find some quiet peace in the desert. On the other hand, the description might also remind you of an isolated Christian monastery. Qumran seemed so much like a medieval monastery to the modern excavator of the site that it clearly affected his interpretation of what he found.

The Excavation of Qumran
The discovery of the Cave 1 scrolls in 1947 prompted both archaeologists and fortune hunters to seek out more ancient texts in the Judean Desert. In 1951, Father Roland DeVaux of the Ecole Biblique in Jerusalem began excavations of a site overlooking the Dead Sea near its northwestern shore. DeVaux, working in cooperation with the Jordanian government, suspected that the site was somehow connected with the scrolls in the nearby caves. Not long after excavation began, his hunch was strengthened when local bedouin discovered what is now known as Cave 4 little more than 100 meters south of the edge of the village of Qumran. DeVaux ultimately collected thousands of scroll scraps from the bedouin and his own salvage work in the cave after the bedouin left. He would spend five years, on and off, digging up the remains of the village, and exploring small portions of the adjacent cemetery.

DeVaux discovered that Qumran was originally settled sometime in the Eighth Century BCE as a defensive outpost of the southern Jewish kingdom of Judah. Based on lists of villages recorded in the Book of Joshua for the eastern edges of Judean territory, the name of this outpost 2700 years ago may have been Ir-HaMelakh, or "City of Salt." We have no idea if this was still the name of the place seven centuries later when the scrolls were written. This outpost was smashed by the Babylonians under Nebuchadnezzar sometime around 586 BCE.

After 400 years as an empty ruin, the site was re-occupied roughly between 150-140 BCE. DeVaux described this first renewed settlement as Phase Ia of Qumran. Wall stubs from the old Judean outpost were rebuilt, and two new cisterns were dug. All in all, it wasn't much. Phase Ib, probably beginning in the reign of the Hasmonean John Hyrcanus (134-104 BCE) was an era of great expansion for the site. Many new buildings were added, along with numerous water cisterns, channels, and mikvaoth, or Jewish ritual baths. The new structures included a large watchtower, communal use structures for eating and working, a large assembly hall, potter's workshop, even a laundry area. Whatever was not built during Hyrcanus' reign was finished under his successor, Alexander Jannaeus (103-76 BCE). Phase Ib was certainly the era when some of the Dead Sea Scrolls were written, whether at Qumran or elsewhere. To this period we may assign The Manual of Discipline, The Damascus Document, The Temple Scroll, and the Great Isaiah Scroll, among others (these and other texts will be discussed in Part IV of this course). This phase was likely closed by two catastrophes: an earthquake and massive fire in 31 BCE (an alternate theory holds that a Parthian Persian invasion in 40 BCE may have been the main cause of Qumran's destruction). DeVaux argued in his preliminary report of excavations that Qumran was left abandoned for roughly 25 years, until around the death of Herod. Modern scholarship debates this point, and the issue remains unresolved.

In the last years of the First Century BCE, Phase II saw the village rebuilt more or less along the same lines as Phase IB. There is no question that the population of Phase II was Jewish, although a few noteworthy changes in one or two of the buildings hint that their practices may have been slightly different. Phase II was ended in the summer of 68 CE as Roman troops under the future Emperor Vespasian destroyed Qumran as part of a military sweep through the area. Phase III consisted of a Roman garrison built over the ruins of Qumran's Phase II. The Romans had no need for all the water storage, so only one of the original cisterns was re-used. Abandoned after the fall of Massada in 73/4 CE, Qumran remained unoccupied until Jewish rebels returned to the caves and the site of Qumran during the brief and unsuccessful Bar-Kokhba Revolt (ca. 132-135 CE). After this, Qumran disappeared under the accumulating dust of centuries.

Visiting Qumran
Qumran is located near the northwestern shore of the Dead Sea just north of the Wadi Qumran stream bed. About two kilometers south of Qumran was the village of Ein Feshkha, a kind of 'industrial park' whose occupation parallels that of Qumran. Ein Feshkha was a processing site for the local date industry and other activities. No scrolls or other religious activity went on at Ein Feshkha. Ein Feshkha may well answer the question: What did the Qumran community members do for a day job? It certainly wasn't writing and selling Dead Sea scrolls!

A number of clues to the variety of "industrial" activities of the Qumran community can be found at Ein Feshkha. DeVaux, in his preliminary report on the site, believed that Ein Feshkha was a large date processing facility, as mentioned above. DeVaux also believed that one of the buildings and water basins at Ein Feshkha were designed for the curing of hides, a very useful industry if Qumran itself was focused on the production of scroll texts on animal skins. Alternatively, the basins built at Ein Feshkha may have been part of a 'fish farm' industry. Finally, the archaeological work at both Feshkha and Qumran, suggests that the local resources of salt and bitumen/asphalt were collected and traded.

As ancient Israel sites go, Qumran is nothing to write home about. Measuring only about 80 by 100 meters, the entire village covered little more than the area of a football field. Most tour buses these days simply skip Qumran and head out to the far more impressive site of Massada farther south. That's a shame, because Qumran has a fascinating story to tell about a place where some truly unique people lived.

In ancient times, visitors would enter the village at the north end, near a two story entrance tower. Its plaster lined rooms were probably used mostly for storage. The tower was built with very thick walls, suggesting to University of Chicago scholar Norman Golb that Qumran was some sort of fortress way station. Unfortunately, nothing else about the site suggests such a use. The walls were pathetically thin, with several undefended access points. Many ancient villages had entrance gates and towers. Aside from storage, the towers were also useful in helping the town's "guardians" see trading caravans or approaching troops approaching long before they arrived. If an enemy was approaching (and this happened a number of times in Qumran's history), the locals would almost certainly head for the hills and hide in the many caves, since Qumran itself would offer precious little protection!

Behind the tower was a complex of rooms. One of the smaller ones had plaster coated benches running around three of the walls. It could comfortably accommodate 10-20 people. DeVaux believed it was the assembly room for the community's leaders, including the successor of the founder, "The Teacher of Righteousness,"and a group of 12 elders. Here, initiates seeking entry into the community would be questioned, established members who had violated the community's endless list of rules would receive notice of their punishment, and other issues of consequence to the community would be discussed. Next door to this chamber is the mysterious "Room 30," the so-called Scriptorium, which we'll visit in a bit. Dividing these rooms and the tower from the architecture on the right was the "main drag" of the village, which would take you, with a few jogs and turns to the south end of town, a journey you could easily make in two minutes flat. Once you got to the south end of town, you'd reach the largest single room in the complex, a public dining hall, which we'll drop toward the end of our tour.

Over on the west end of town was located a circular water reservoir with a water channel feeding into it from the bottom right. Water reached this reservoir from the channel which made its way to the cliffs nearby. A reservoir at the base of the cliffs collected the water that fell from them during the occasional storms (about twice a year) that swept through in ancient times. As you'll see, Qumran's demand for water was extraordinary, and the town's builders designed efficient and ingenious ways to use what was available. In case you're curious, this circular water storage area was not a mikveh (Jewish ritual bath), but you'll see an example in just a bit.

Walking behind the entrance tower through a narrow allow, we come to what DeVaux dubbed "The Scriptorium." Conjuring up the imagery of an early Christian monastery, DeVaux believed this isolated village was a kind of ancient Jewish predecessor of this medieval Christian institution, so he applied the Latin names for monastery rooms to the rooms of Qumran. Despite a lot of knee-jerk criticism from many scholars for using such Christian terminology for a clearly Jewish site, there's actually some usefulness in many of the names he chose.

What the tour guides often don't tell you is that the room you're looking at was not the room where scrolls were written/copied, but it was actually the room above, which no longer survives. This lower room had some kind of oven/kiln whose use is still debated. Perhaps it was used for the final processing of the hides for copying. Alternatively, it may have been a food preparation area. DeVaux fairly careful excavations revealed that an upstairs room had collapsed down into this lower room with the final destruction of the site. From that upper room, DeVaux found the remains of long plaster-coated benches and a few inkwells.

Does this give you a clue? For DeVaux, this was the smoking gun, the proof that the upper room was used to copy scrolls. Upper story windows facing east made the best use of available light, but there were also a number of oil lamps found, suggesting that copying was a day and night pursuit. The inkwells were an exceptional discovery, in that they are rarely found. With the copy benches and the inkwells, how could anyway eschew the obvious?

Enter the husband-wife archaeological couple, the Donceels, from Belgium. Since DeVaux never published a final excavation report, the Donceels took up the daunting challenge of digging up the dusty files of notes and photographs in order to provide a sensible and comprehensive summary of what DeVaux and his team dug up 40 years ago. They even went back to the site and conducted their own investigation of some surviving features. The result: the Donceels determined that the upstairs scriptorium was actually a fine dining room. Never mind that the plaster benches were not conducive to fine dining in the First Century. One wonders if the Donceels believe that the contents of inkwells were on the menu!

In the flurry of new interpretations about the function of the site of Qumran, the Donceels join Norman Golb and Lawrence Schiffman in providing immensely inventive alternatives to the original suggestions of DeVaux. Along with Golb's idea that Qumran was a fortress, or the Donceels' notion that it served as a caravanserai/way-station, Schiffman has proposed that the village was a kind of Palm Springs resort for wealthy Sadducees who wanted to get away from the chills of wintry Jerusalem. Considering the truly modest character of the site and its finds, along with the simple burials in the neighboring cemetery, it's hard to build much enthusiasm for Qumran as a luxury spa. Our next stop in the tour will bring home this point.

With a beautiful view of the Dead Sea and the hills of Jordan in the distance, the setting for DeVaux' "Dining Room" was truly stunning. But the room was not built to take advantage of the view. The room took its original shape in Phase IB. Long and narrow, it had a plastered floor which sloped toward the east. At the western end, a branch of the village water channel could be opened to flood the floor, sweeping it to immaculate cleanliness. In an adjacent room which DeVaux called the pantry, he discovered about 1,000 simple pottery bowls and vessels. Clearly, this was a large public dining hall for the entire community. Although far from fancy, the dining hall was designed with purity in mind. We know from the various sectarian scrolls found in the nearby caves that avoiding unclean things was a central issue in the ritual life of Qumran. What could be more unclean than rotting food on the floor? If the collection of pottery and utensils included a clear majority of expenses imported wares, we might well argue that Qumran was the home of ritually pure Sadducees from the priestly leadership classes of Jerusalem. But this is simply not the case.

One interesting point about the dining hall: After its destruction in Phase IB, it was rebuilt in Phase II along the same lines as its predecessor. DeVaux reported one interesting set of differences: the opening for the water channel was blocked off, the floor no longer sloped down toward the west, and the southern door (where wash water could exit the room) was blocked off. Whoever built the later phase of the dining hall did not feel that the absolute ritual cleanliness of the Phase IB dining hall had to be maintained in the same way. This mysterious change is a critical issue the scholarly community has not addressed.

What do you think? Please feel free to e-mail your responses to Jehon Grist, your instructor, at jgrist@lehrhaus.org.

DeVaux had absolutely no trouble interpreting what happened here, and you probably won't have any trouble either, especially if you live in California earthquake country, as I do. The devastating temblor of 31 BCE left its indelible mark on the mikveh stairway you see here toward the south end of the village. Of moderate size compared to the nine other mikvaoth at Qumran, this one had the standard plaster-coated steps, and plaster dividing lines, which you can make out toward the top of the stairway. Mikvaoth are relatively common archaeological finds in the land of Israel, especially for the later Second Temple Period (1st century BCE-1st century CE). Complete immersion in the mikveh allowed members of the Jerusalem Priestly class to enter the Temple grounds and the Temple itself in complete ritual purity as prescribed by Torah. For those of you who think that mikveh today is a ritual incumbent on women only, think of the time when the Temple still stood. Since only men could enter the immediate Temple enclosure, ritual purity for them was a necessity. With the destruction of the Temple, men lost the chief reason for purifying themselves in the mikveh, although the obligation remains to this day. Since mikveh is still prescribed for observant women who have completed their monthly period, it is not surprising so many think mikveh is only for women.

Why the focus on ritual purity at Qumran? Archaeology has not revealed a Temple here, although there is some indirect evidence for animal sacrifice and ritual meals involving meat. Whether or not the Community at Qumran had some kind of Temple structure, they clearly hoped that they would someday return to Jerusalem. At that time, they would purify and restore the Temple there to what they considered the "true" faith and ritual. To work consistently toward that dream, they had to maintain the rules of ritual purity in their own lives. Ritual purity and cleanliness was also required of warriors preparing for a great battle. If the so-called War Scroll (Battle of the Sons of Light Against the Sons of Darkness) reflects the spiritually militant attitude of the Qumran Community, then they clearly kept themselves pure in vigilant preparation for the final conflict.

By the way, why the plaster dividing lines on the stairs? I'll give you the answer to this question after we visit the cemetery. In the meantime, give this question some thought and your best guess.

In fact, there is evidence for several cemeteries. In the main one, east of the village proper, DeVaux counted about 1100 burials. DeVaux excavated only 26 in this group, but the findings were fairly consistent. The burials were laid out in an orderly fashion on a north-south axis with the head at the south end. The burial style marked a significant departure from the popular First Century norm of burying several family members in a rock-cut tomb. Instead the Qumran burials were individual. The deceased was buried with minimal grave goods in a pit about 2 meters deep. The burial was marked by a pile of stones on top. All the individual burials excavated in the main cemetery were male. In the eastern extensions of the main cemetery, a number of burials were opened which contained female skeletons and even children.

The presumed predominance of male burials is often cited as clear evidence that the population within the walls of Qumran was celibate, as ancient historians claim the Essenes were. That doesn't explain the peripheral burials of women and even children. The Temple Scroll mentions that one cemetery area may serve several communities, and it may be that some of the burials of females came from neighboring sites like Ein Feshkha. In several cases, the deceased was interred in a coffin, suggesting that the body was brought from some distance for burial near Qumran.

DeVaux noted in his excavation reports that there was some evidence for tents and/or shed shelters, perhaps for "hangers-on" of one kind or another who were somehow associated with the Qumran community, but lived outside its walls. Could it be that some of these "hangers-on" were women or children? Josephus mentions that the (presumed) celibate Essenes at Qumran adopted young boys into their care. Could this explain the few burials of children? In the end, definitive answers will probably remain elusive. With the current Israeli government's careful respect for the views of its religious party allies, it is very unlikely that additional Qumran burials will be excavated.

So what about the plaster dividing lines on the stairs? The bather would go down one side of the stairs ritually impure. Having completely immersed and purified himself, he would have to go up the other side of the stair dividing line, since his feet were impure on the side going down. It made all the sense in the world, especially if you were an Essene!

Summing Up
The excavation of Qumran has given scholars some useful background in developing a portrait of the Dead Sea Scroll community and its life. We know that the site was established by a Jewish breakaway group around 140 BCE. From a small initial settlement, it soon grew to a community of up to 250 people that thrived until the earthquake of 31 BCE destroyed it. Rebuilt anywhere from a few to about twenty-five years later, the village resumed life along similar (although not identical) lines to that of its predecessor. One noteworthy exception is the dining hall of Phase II, whose rebuilding shows changes suggesting that the new population was not as concerned with cleanliness and purity in this room as the preceding phase. Does this suggest a slightly different Jewish group in Phase II from that which resided at Qumran in Phase IB? Phase II at Qumran ends with the Roman destruction of the site in 68 CE. Although a brief Roman occupation is followed 65 years later by the use of Qumran as a Bar Kokhba Rebellion site, the real life of the community and its work of composing and copying Jewish religious texts ended with Phase II.

What can we say about the population within the walls of Qumran? They were probably mostly, or perhaps totally males, since the great majority of burials in the nearby cemeteries were of men. They paid strict attention to ritual purity, as witnessed by a total of 10 mikvaoth or ritual baths. This focus on purity may also be evidenced by their own pottery production facility, suggesting that vessels rendered impure could easily be discarded and replaced. Nearly all the definable buildings within Qumran's walls had a public or community use, rather than being private residences. The discovery of a large cache of coins in DeVaux's excavations implies a communal treasury and lifestyle. Aside from copying scrolls, some of Qumran's citizens may have been involved in local industries, such as date processing, as well as trade in salt and bitumen. Their community was very modest and largely self-sufficient. The thin walls (often only .6 m thick) and overall lack of weapons confirm that this was not a military installation.

Were the people of Qumran celibate Essenes? This is a question that archaeology cannot answer by itself. Most leading Dead Sea Scrolls scholars, such as Magen Broshi, James Charlesworth and Devora Dimant, all agree that the Essenes were the Jewish sect that inhabited Qumran, and that the theology reflected in the sectarian Dead Sea Scroll texts matches what we know about Essene beliefs.

Whoever populated Qumran, did they write the scrolls discovered in the nearby caves? The Room 30 discoveries indicate that at least one large room at the site was devoted to the practice of scroll writing. This does not preclude the possibility that many of the scrolls were 'imported' from Jerusalem or other sites. This may be true for both copies of books of the Hebrew Bible found in the caves, as well as some of the sectarian scrolls. On this point, DNA research may ultimately provide new insights. By analyzing minute samples of all the scroll documents, DNA 'fingerprints' may be established, suggesting which scrolls came from skins of related animals. Since evidence from both Qumran and Ein Feshkha suggest the possibility of local scroll leather processing, DNA research might well identify which scrolls came from the skins of animals of local related herds. Scrolls with distinct DNA fingerprints might well have been brought in from more distant sites. In this way, we may someday begin to guess which scrolls were copied or originally composed locally, and which were brought to Qumran from Jerusalem or elsewhere.

We have now learned about the discovery of the Dead Sea scrolls, the site of Qumran where the Dead Sea scroll community certainly lived, and the development of Jewish sects from the Biblical period to the Roman Empire. We've asked a good many questions, and even managed to answer a few of them. It's time to look at several of the scrolls themselves to see what they can tell us about this mysterious community, their beliefs, and perhaps some of the origins of our own religious ideas today.

Continue to Part IV of this course.