Quick facts

Location

Khirbet Qumran stands on a limestone terrace between the cliffs and the north-western shore of the Dead Sea, about 15 km south of Jericho, near Ain al-Feshkha, on the lands of the Jericho and Jordan Valley governorate, occupied since 1967. Natural and man-made caves dot the surrounding cliffs, where the scrolls were preserved for nearly two thousand years.

Discovery of the scrolls

In 1947 the Palestinian shepherd Muhammad al-Dhib of the Bedouin Ta'amra clan, searching for a stray goat, came upon a cave near Ain al-Feshkha containing pottery jars holding leather scrolls. Seven main scrolls came out of the first cave and were sold through an antiquities dealer in Bethlehem and Jerusalem; the Syriac Orthodox Metropolitan of Jerusalem bought four and smuggled them to the United States in 1948, and the Hebrew University bought three. The search then moved to neighbouring caves, and thousands of fragments were found in eleven caves.

The Jordanian excavations

After the West Bank came under Jordanian administration, the Jordanian government assigned an Arab Army officer to locate and protect the caves, and the Jordanian Department of Antiquities surveyed the caves and excavated the khirbet in cooperation with the French Biblical and Archaeological School (École Biblique) in Jerusalem and the American School of Oriental Research, in seasons between 1951 and 1956. In 1952 the Jordanian Council of Ministers allocated 15,000 dinars to buy the fragments found, and Jordan's total spending on their purchase reached about 33,473 dinars. They were kept in the Palestine Archaeological Museum in Jerusalem, whose management passed to the Jordanian government, and an international team studied and published them between 1953 and 1967.

The site's features

The excavations uncovered a large building complex with communal facilities, a large dining hall, a room believed to have been used for writing and copying, and an advanced water system of channels, pools and cisterns collecting floodwater from the neighbouring wadi, as well as a pottery workshop and a large cemetery of more than a thousand graves. Sources attribute the site to an ascetic religious community living in seclusion away from the cities, which many scholars identify as the Essenes, while others propose different interpretations of the site's function. The site was abandoned and destroyed around 68 CE during the Roman war.

The scrolls and their contents

The Dead Sea Scrolls comprise about a thousand manuscripts from tens of thousands of fragments, most on leather and some on papyrus, among them the "Copper Scroll". They date from the 2nd century BCE to the 1st century CE and include copies of books of the Bible, the oldest known, non-canonical writings, and texts specific to the community that lived at Qumran, such as rules, commentaries and prayers, including "The War of the Sons of Light against the Sons of Darkness" and the "Damascus Document". Most were written in Hebrew, some in Aramaic, the language of the region at the time, and a few in Greek.

The seizure of the scrolls in 1967

After the occupation of East Jerusalem and the West Bank in June 1967, the occupation authorities seized the Palestine Archaeological Museum and the Qumran scrolls it held; the museum was then directed by the Jerusalem historian Aref al-Aref. They also confiscated a scroll held by the Bethlehem antiquities dealer. Work on the scrolls stopped until 1990, when an Israeli-led team published them, and in 2000 the scrolls were moved to West Jerusalem. Jordanian and Palestinian researchers argue that this violates the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict and later conventions, which forbid an occupying power from removing cultural property from occupied territory, and Jordan and Palestine call for their return.

The site today (2026)

Khirbet Qumran lies in Area C of the occupied West Bank, under full Israeli control, and the occupation authorities run it as a tourist site presented to visitors stripped of its Palestinian context, while Palestinians are denied the management and use of their heritage in the Dead Sea and the Jordan Valley. The site remains a witness to the richness of Palestinian history, and to a discovery that began with a Palestinian shepherd and ended with the occupation's confiscation of what was found.

Frequently asked questions

Conclusion

On the shores of the Dead Sea, in the caves of Qumran, scrolls more than two thousand years old lay preserved until a Palestinian shepherd found them, revealing to the world a chapter in the history of this land. But the site and its scrolls have become hostages of the occupation, and recovering looted Palestinian heritage remains part of the Palestinians' struggle for their land and their memory.