Qumran

Qumran lies on the northwestern shore of the Dead Sea. From 1947, Bedouin and archaeologists found eleven caves in the cliffs nearby holding the Dead Sea Scrolls, about 900 manuscripts in Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek. The ruins below, called Khirbet Qumran, were excavated by Roland de Vaux from 1949, who found a complex with ritual baths, a large hall and a cemetery.

The settlement was occupied from about the 1st century BCE until 68 CE, when it was destroyed during the Jewish revolt against Rome. Most scholars link it to a Jewish community, often identified with the Essenes, who followed a 364-day calendar and quarreled with the Jerusalem Temple. Others see the site as a fort, villa or pottery center and the scrolls as brought from elsewhere.

The caves preserved Aramaic fragments of 1 Enoch, the Book of Giants, Jubilees and the Genesis Apocryphon, giving the oldest copies of many texts this site discusses.