The mysterious archaeological ruins from where the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered 60 years ago served first as a fortress before being adopted by Jewish religious sect, two UCLA researchers contend.
“Qumran was established originally as a fortress, just as the archaeological evidence shows, and then it was abandoned,” said Robert R. Cargill, a UCLA graduate student in Near Eastern Culture and Languages. “It was later resettled by the Essenes, an early Jewish religious community that came from Jerusalem, bringing with them the scrolls and continuing to copy and compose new scrolls.”
Cargill and collaborator William M. Schniedewind, chair of the UCLA Department of Near Eastern Cultures and Languages, arrived at the conclusion while building the world’s first three-dimensional computer model of the site, which has been the subject of debate since a Bedouin shepherd discovered the first scrolls in a cave above Qumran in 1947.
“Once you put all the archaeological evidence into three dimensions, the solution literally jumps out at you,” said Schniedewind, the project’s principle investigator.
The scholars hope their Qumran Visualization Project will resolve the conflict surrounding the history and evolution of the West Bank site.
Generations of scholars have clashed over whether Qumran served exclusively as a monastery for the scholarly and pacifist Essenes; a fortress for the mighty Hasmoneans, whose victory against ancient Greek occupiers is celebrated during Hanukkah; or a rich Jerusalem family’s villa that was later adapted by the Essenes as a Jewish communal compound.
With the judiciousness of Solomon, Cargill and Schniedewind cut the three competing theories down the middle, contending that none of them hold together without elements from the others.
“We felt it was of the utmost important to allow the archaeological remains to speak for themselves,” said Schniedewind. “So we decided to follow the evidence in modeling the site, no matter where it would lead. In attempting to reconstruct many of the suggestions made by scholars over the years, we found that many were simply not possible architecturally. But when half of the elements were taken from each of the competing theories and added to each other, the most plausible — and buildable — explanation emerged.”
Cargill and Schniedewind contend that the original 20,150-square-foot, two-story structure, which has a four-story tower and surrounds a 3,229-square-foot courtyard, could not have been built originally as the home of a sectarian religious community, as Roland de Vaux, a French Dominican priest who led the original excavation of the site, held. De Vaux maintained that the original occupants, who refer to themselves in the scrolls as the “Yahad,” were the Essenes.
Central to de Vaux’s theory is the existence of a communal dining hall, which was vividly described in the scrolls. While early excavations indeed discovered enough pottery to feed a religious community, the dining room was not part of the original structure, the UCLA researchers contend.
“Once we put the dining hall into the model, we realized it had to be an addition,” Cargill said. “It only fits to the south of the original structure.”
When the site served as a fortress, housing fewer people than the Jewish religious settlement, residents would have eaten elsewhere, possibly in a central courtyard where ovens have been excavated, the UCLA team contends.
Similarly, 1,120-square-foot, two-story scriptorium — or large work room for producing scrolls — has long been thought to be central to the religious community, but the position of the room and thickness of the walls are more consistent with an addition than an original feature of the structure, the UCLA team found.
But if Qumran does not appear to have been originally designed for communal life, its evolution is not consistent with use exclusively
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