NEW Dead Sea Scroll fragments have been discovered in what researchers call the ‘Cave of Horror’.
Israeli archaeologists say the fragments are at least 2,000 years old and were discovered in the Judean Desert.
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The famous Dead Sea Scrolls are ancient Jewish religious manuscripts that were first found in the Qumran Caves in the dessert to the north of the Dead Sea.
They were first discovered around 1946 and are thought to date back to around the last three centuries BC.
The new scroll fragments are the first to be found in six decades.
The Israel Antiques Authority (IAA) revealed they’d been found in a dangerous cave in the Judean Desert during a mission to search all the caves in the area.
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Experts call it the ‘Cave of Horror’ and it’s located in Nahal Hever.
An Israel Antiquities Authority press release explained that the cave is “flanked by gorges and can only be reached by rappelling precariously down the sheer cliff.”
In addition to being dangerous to reach, 40 human skeletons were found at the cave during excavations in the 1960s.
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The new scroll fragments feature Greek translations of the books of Nahum and Zechariah that are in the Book of the Twelve Minor Prophets.
Experts have been searching caves in the Judean Desert since 2017 after the IAA went on a mission to find any more scrolls before they could be stolen.
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The first scrolls were found accidentally by shepherds around 70 years ago.
It’s thought they were stashed away for safe keeping during a Jewish revolt against Rome around 2,000 years ago.
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Researchers worked over an area of 50 miles and stepped into caves that may not have seen humans for 2,000 years.
They found a number of other artefacts including a mummified child and an ancient basket.
The Dead Sea Scrolls explained
The Dead Sea Scrolls are said to have been discovered in 11 caves along the northwest shore of the Dead Sea between 1946/47 and 1956.
There are around 981 different texts in total and almost all of the Hebrew Bible is represented in them.
The Dead Sea Scrolls include fragments from every book of the Old Testament except for the Book of Esther.
The majority of the Dead Sea Scrolls are in Hebrew, with some fragments written in the ancient paleo-Hebrew alphabet thought to have fallen out of use in the fifth century BC.
However some are in Aramaic, the language spoken by many Jewish people between the sixth century BC and the siege of Jerusalem in 70 AD.
Several texts feature translations of the Hebrew Bible into Greek, which some Jewish people used instead of or in addition to Hebrew at the time of the scrolls’ creation.
They have been translated into English and published digitally.
Stephen Fry investigates The Dead Sea Scrolls – some of the oldest copies of Bible text ever discovered in the 20th century
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