One of the world’s oldest dead sea scrolls has been found 6,000 miles away from its original resting place.
The scroll is estimated to be roughly 2,700 years old and is one of just three papyri to survive from the First Temple Period.
It was largely forgotten about by scientists until the death of Ada Yardeni, a scholar of ancient Hebrew script, in 2018.
Dead sea scrolls are ancient Jewish and Hebrew religious manuscripts discovered in 1946/1947 at the Qumran Caves in what was then Mandatory Palestine.
Professor Shmuel Ahituv was asked to complete Ms Yardeni’s unfinished book and it wasn’t until he was working on this that he discovered the fragment in a photo and launched a campaign to track down the missing document.
It has now been located in Montana, US, where its owner explained his mother received it as a gift while visiting Jerusalem in 1965.
Its owner visited the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) lab where the dead sea scrolls are preserved, and agreed it should stay there for future conservation.
To confirm if the document is genuine, it was radiometrically dated at the Weizmann Institute in Rehovot.
It was probably taken from the same Judean Desert caves where the other dead sea scrolls were preserved for millennia by a dry, stable climate.
Joe Uziel, director of the IAA Judean Desert Scrolls Unit said: ‘Towards the end of the First Temple period, writing was widespread.
‘However, First Temple-period documents written on organic materials – such as this papyrus – have scarcely survived.
‘Whilst we have thousands of scroll fragments dating from the Second Temple period, we have only three documents, including this newly found one, from the First Temple period.
‘Each new document sheds further light on the literacy and the administration of the First Temple period.’
The fragment comprises just four torn lines beginning with the words ‘to Ishmael send…’ in ancient Hebrew.
The full message is thought to have been a set of instructions to the recipient.
Professor Ahituv, from Ben Gurion University of the Negev, said: ‘The name Ishmael mentioned in the document, was a common name in the biblical period, meaning “God will hear”.
‘It first appears in the Bible as the name of the son of Abraham and Hagar, and it is subsequently the personal name of several individuals in the Bible.
‘It also appears as the name of officials on paleographic finds such as bullae – clay stamp seals – used for sealing royal documents in the administration of the Kingdom of Judah.’
The document will now be preserved at the IAA Dead Sea Scrolls Unit for future generations.
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