Three of the original seven scrolls found in Cave 1 near Qumran were instrumental in identifying sectarian texts and remain some of the most well-known manuscripts: the Community Rule (Serekh HaYahad), the Scroll of the War of the Sons of Light Against the Sons of Darkness, and the Habakkuk Commentary (Pesher Habakkuk).

The most well-known texts among the Dead Sea Scrolls are the ancient religious writings found in eleven caves near the site of Qumran. Discoveries from additional sites yielded mostly documents and letters, especially papyri that had been hidden in caves by refugees from wars.

The Leon Levy Dead Sea Scrolls Digital Library offers an exceptional encounter with antiquity. Using the world's most advanced imaging technology, the Digital Library makes thousands of scroll fragments accessible to the public for the first time.

During this time, different Judean groups struggled to obtain and maintain political and religious leadership. As primary sources, the Dead Sea Scrolls shed light on these historical events and explore the ways that various Jews of the Second Temple era related to the world around them.

The first Dead Sea Scrolls were found in this cave, later called Cave 1. They were the best-preserved, said to have been protected by tall clay jars with lids intact. This seven-Scroll discovery revolutionized the study of the Hebrew Bible and the origins of Judeo-Christianity.

Explore the treasures of the Dead Sea Scrolls. While the precious Scrolls are secured in climate-controlled vaults, their secrets are laid bare here. View infrared photos from the 1950s archive and examine the latest high-definition spectral images, which …

This vast manuscript treasury, known as the "Dead Sea Scrolls", includes a small number of near-complete Scrolls and tens of thousands of Scroll fragments, representing over 900 different texts written in Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek.

Scholars sorted all of these fragments on the basis of physical material and shape, content, and handwriting in order to reconstruct the original manuscripts when possible. Each Dead Sea Scroll manuscript is unique, even if its content is also found in other manuscripts.

The discovery of the first Dead Sea Scrolls in a remote Judean Desert cave in 1947 is widely considered the greatest archaeological event of the twentieth century. Bedouin treasure hunters and archaeologists ultimately found the remains of hundreds of ancient scrolls.

Since the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, scholars and conservators have been concerned with their conservation, preservation and documentation. For over 2,000 years, the Scrolls were preserved in a relatively stable environment: the caves of the Judean Desert.