Hebrew University Announces the Discovery of Qumran Scroll Cave 12

My wife pointed out to me last night that Hebrew University just published a press release announcing the discovery of a 12th scroll cave near Qumran. Apparently the excavators found numerous scroll jars, some linen used for wrapping the scrolls, and one piece of parchment probably from a scroll. They are currently trying to discover whether the parchment has any writing on it or not. They also found iron pickaxe heads from looters in the 1950s, all of which leads them to conclude that the cave originally contained DSS, but that they were all looted. This potentially throws further into question the already tenuous identification of the provenance of many of our scroll fragments, as it is entirely possible that some of them came from this 12th cave.

New DSS Fragments from the Cave of the Skulls

A recent article notes that a couple of small, as-yet undeciphered fragments were discovered in recent salvage excavations in the Cave of the Skulls.

HT Daniel Falk