DEAD SEA SCROLL JAR

MS 1655/1
MS Short Title DEAD SEA SCROLL JAR FROM QUMRAN
Text CYLINDRICAL JAR WITH MISSING LID
Description Pottery jar of cylindrical form (complete), Qumran, before 68 AD, h. 43 cm, diam. 21 cm, flattening sharply at top and bottom to a 15 cm wide collared neck, and a ring base respectively, 3 handles or rather horizontal lugs on the shoulders pierced with holes through which a string could be passed to retain the lid in position, lid now missing.
Context About 40-50 jars were found in Qumran cave 1, nearly all broken and incomplete. 2 complete jars in The Shrine of the Book, Israel Museum, 1 in The John Allegro Collection, Manchester, and 1 complete and most of the broken ones at Rockefeller Museum Jerusalem, a few other broken exemplars in museums in Jordan, Western Europe and USA.
Provenance 1. Community of the Essenes, Qumran (until 68 AD); 2. Qumran cave, probably cave 1 (68- ca. 1948); 3. Members of the Ta'amireh tribe, Judaean desert (ca. 1948-1952); 4. Khalil Iskander Shahin ("Kando"), Bethlehem (ca. 1952-1953); 5. John Marco Allegro, Oxford and Manchester (1953-1963); 6. Sotheby's, London 11.11.1963:72; 7. H.M. Serota, Chicago (1963-1987); 8. Fayez Barakat, Los Angeles (1987-1991), Cat. Masterpieces in the Barakat Collection (1989):PF 1123; 9. Leonard Berman, Los Angeles (1991-1992); 10. David Goldstein, Los Angeles (1992-1993).
Commentary This MS storage jar is mentioned in John Allegro: The Dead Sea Scrolls, Middlesex, Penguin, 1956, p. 77. Illustrated in: The Allegro Qumran Collection. Supplement to the Dead Sea Scrolls on microfiche, Ed.: George J. Brooke, Leiden, E. Brill, 1996, frames 10 (B10-C10), AQ. Pots 9-19, the photos taken 1963 at Prestburg. The jar was probably found in cave 1, the starting point of the most important and widely published and controversial archaeological MS find of this century. The hoard from 11 caves consists of ca. 16 intact or mainly intact scrolls and between 15,000 and 100,000 fragments from ca. 800 scrolls, containing about 600 different texts in Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek. The discovery was a break-through for the study of Judaism and of the Old Testament with texts about 1000 years older than the MSS of the 10th c. previously known.
Place of origin Qumran
Dates before 68 AD