Dead Sea Scrolls: The Copper Scroll

Summary

The Ancients: Dead Sea Scrolls – The Copper Scroll

Host: Tristan Hughes
Guest: Dr. Joan Taylor, King's College London
Release Date: October 31, 2024

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Introduction

In the episode titled "Dead Sea Scrolls: The Copper Scroll," host Tristan Hughes delves into one of the most enigmatic artifacts among the Dead Sea Scrolls—the Copper Scroll. Joined by Dr. Joan Taylor, a renowned expert from King's College London, the discussion unravels the mysteries surrounding this unique scroll, its origins, and the tantalizing prospect of hidden treasures it describes.

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Discovery and Description of the Copper Scroll

The Copper Scroll stands apart from the traditional Dead Sea Scrolls, primarily due to its material composition and content. Unlike the predominantly parchment-based scrolls that contain biblical texts and sectarian writings of the Essenes, the Copper Scroll is composed almost entirely of copper.

Dr. Joan Taylor explains, “The Copper scroll is a scroll made of copper, which is 99% copper with only 1% tin, making it distinct from the leather or papyrus manuscripts typically found among the Dead Sea Scrolls” (08:10). Discovered in Cave 3 at Qumran in the early 1950s by archaeologists, the scroll was heavily oxidized, resulting in its fragmentation into 23 strips. This unique artifact was meticulously unraveled using specially designed saws to preserve the ancient Hebrew inscriptions.

Tristan Hughes notes the physical attributes of the scroll, mentioning, “At the moment what I'm looking at is 23 different strips of this scroll. But originally it was one big scroll” (09:04). The fragmentation has led to its current strip-like presentation, which adds to its mystique.

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Significance and Contents

The Copper Scroll differs significantly in content, as it purportedly lists locations where vast amounts of gold and silver treasures are buried. Dr. Taylor elaborates, “The scroll refers to various locations where this treasure was buried. It's not talking about one central location, but in total, it's talking about roughly 120 tons of gold and silver” (10:42). This has earned the Copper Scroll the nickname "ancient treasure map," sparking endless fascination and speculation.

One notable entry from the scroll describes a treasure of 42 talents of silver located at a specific ruin: “...a weight of 17 talents...” (39:53). To contextualize, a talent was an ancient unit of weight, making these treasures incredibly substantial in today's terms.

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Debates and Theories

The existence and location of the treasures listed in the Copper Scroll have been subjects of intense debate among scholars and archaeologists. Several theories have emerged regarding the origin and purpose of the treasures:

1. Temple Treasures Hidden During Conflicts: The prevailing theory suggests that the treasures were items taken from the Great Temple of Jerusalem during various conflicts, such as the Jewish Revolt and the Bar Kokhba Revolt. Dr. Taylor discusses the historical context, stating, “There are actually all sorts of times when people in Jerusalem might have wanted to hide some of the treasure from the temple” (52:31). This theory posits that the scroll was created in a hurry as a contingency against impending Roman invasions.

2. Disputed Authenticity: Some scholars question the authenticity of the Copper Scroll, proposing that it might be a later forgery. Dr. Taylor acknowledges, “There are some that even believe that actually the treasure that this scroll is referring to never actually existed. And in fact, that this Copper scroll is a fake” (13:00). However, the lack of definitive evidence has kept this debate alive without consensus.

3. Unique Purpose and Context: The scroll’s unique composition suggests a specific purpose, likely related to preserving and safeguarding valuable resources. Dr. Taylor emphasizes the significance of its material: “The copper scroll itself is a treasure to have this much copper. So whoever had the copper scroll who wanted to put it in the cave and wrote on it, they would have had resources to buy this really, really beautiful copper” (19:07). This indicates that the creators had substantial resources and foresight to ensure the scroll's longevity.

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Archaeological Attempts and Challenges

Numerous archaeological expeditions have attempted to locate the treasures described in the Copper Scroll, yet none have been successful. Dr. Taylor recounts, “John Allegro... went from one place to the next and he didn't find anything. He really thought that he was on the trail of where these places were” (47:07). These efforts highlight the challenges posed by the scroll's vague and vague geographic references, such as the "Valley of Acor," which remains ambiguous in modern geography.

Moreover, the lack of precise archaeological records from the initial excavation adds to the difficulty. Dr. Taylor notes, “The team that went into cave 3Q was led by an archaeologist, Henri de Contenson... he never fully published a really proper archaeological report with plans and stratigraphy and where exactly each find was located within the cave” (12:52). This absence of detailed documentation hampers subsequent efforts to trace the scroll’s directives accurately.

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Historical Context and Dating

Determining the precise timeline of the Copper Scroll is pivotal in understanding its purpose. While most Dead Sea Scrolls date back to the first century BCE and CE, the Copper Scroll’s mixture of Mishnaic Hebrew and Greek suggests a potentially later origin. Dr. Taylor proposes, “Another alternative is to push it further in time into the second century” (57:42), aligning it with events such as the Bar Kokhba Revolt, which led to extensive destruction and upheaval in Judea.

This period saw significant Roman devastation, and the hiding of temple treasures would have been a plausible response to such crises. Dr. Taylor elaborates, “They were hiding the treasure in the face of some kind of threat. There's a calamity, a future calamity that's quite near to them” (24:05), indicating the scroll was a strategic measure to preserve wealth for rebuilding the nation post-conflict.

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Conclusion

The Copper Scroll remains one of the most captivating and unresolved mysteries of the Dead Sea Scrolls collection. Its unique composition, content outlining vast hidden treasures, and the historical context of its creation weave a narrative rich with intrigue and scholarly debate. Despite numerous attempts, the treasures listed remain undiscovered, leaving the Copper Scroll to continue its legacy as an ancient enigma.

Notable Quotes:

• Dr. Joan Taylor: “The Copper scroll is nothing like the other Dead Sea Scrolls, it’s just a list of finding places of treasure” (08:30).
• Tristan Hughes: “The Copper scroll was cut up in Manchester in the later 1950s” (10:42).
• Dr. Joan Taylor: “It's an extraordinary artifact. It's unique” (06:00).

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This episode offers a comprehensive exploration of the Copper Scroll, blending historical analysis with archaeological perspectives, making it a must-listen for enthusiasts of ancient history and the enduring mysteries of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Transcript

[Tristan Hughes]

Thanks for listening to the ancients. You can get all history hit podcasts, ad free early access and bonus episodes along with hundreds of original history documentaries by subscribing. Head over to historyhit.com subscribe are you.

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[Professor Susanna Lipscomb]

So I'm in the Jordan Museum at Amman and we've in this small exhibition room. It's black walls and it's a very special place because here they have some of the Dead Sea Scrolls, one of the most extraordinary archaeological discoveries ever made in the Holy Land and indeed in the story of archaeology as a whole. Now what I can see straight away in front of me, they have a few different scrolls here in Jordan and looking at the detail that survives, they are fragments of parchment, but the writing, this old Hebrew writing, a dialect of ancient Hebrew, well, it's incredibly well preserved and it almost looks like it was written a few days ago. And these scrolls, a few of them, they refer to parts of the Old Testament. There's Ecclesiastes down there. There's a passage from Isaiah on that scroll too. And this is one of the great claims to fame of the Dead Sea Scrolls. It's the oldest surviving examples we have of the Hebrew Bible, of what we call the Old Testament, more than 2,000 years old. Now the scrolls survive because they were preserved in caves at the site of Qumran in the West Bank. They were discovered by a local Bedouin shepherd in 1947. So just after the end of World War II, deep in a series of caves at the site of Qumran, believed to be the location of an ancient Jewish section some 2,000 years ago called the Essenes. And many of these scrolls were preserved in what I'm looking at right now, these large storage vessels. It was within them that the scrolls were found. When they were opened up, hundreds of fragments were discovered. These parchments, these pieces of paper of Jewish religious literature. Not just pieces of the Old Testament, but also sectarian works relating to the Essenes and how they viewed life and their code of conduct. But amongst all of these fragments, amongst all of these scrolls, there was one very special one and also a very different one because it's not to do with Jewish religious literature from antiquity. And it wasn't also made of parchment, it was made of copper. And I'm looking at it right now. This is the Copper scroll and it's sometimes called the ancient treasure map because it is very, very different to the rest. What I can see in front of me is this copper scroll divided, it's been cut up into 23 strips. Now, the story behind the Copper scroll is that it was discovered slightly later, in the early 1950s, at the back of Cave 3 at Qumran. And because it was made of copper, 99% copper, 1% tiny, by the time it was discovered, it had become heavily oxidized, so it had compressed and almost formed a cylinder. And at first those who discovered it, they didn't know how to open it without damaging the writing, and they wanted to preserve the writing when they opened it. So they designed a very special type of saw and the scroll was cut up in Manchester in the later 1950s. And what it has revealed are almost instructions of where to find gold and silver. You have to imagine this scroll. At the moment what I'm looking at is 23 different strips of this scroll. But originally it was one big scroll. It was one single text. And some of the details that survive. It's written in old Hebrew too. It refers to various locations where this treasure was buried. It's not talking about one central location, but in total it's Talking about roughly 120 tons of gold and silver. That's billions in today's money. And one particular example I love is in column two. And it talks about how if someone was looking for this treasure, they would have to go to a filled up system and then descend the stairs, go to the bottom of the stairs and there they would find 42 talents of silver. Now, a talent was an ancient weighing system for weighing the amount of gold and silver. And it was particularly prevalent in the Hebrew culture. Now a talent it was a lot. And so 40 talents was a lot of gold and silver. So these are instructions of where to find parts of this great treasure. In total, this adds up to some 120 tonnes of gold, silver. But what do we know about the treasure itself? Well, sadly, barely anything. Because although attempts have been made to try and locate parts of this treasure from what's been said on the scroll, no one has ever been able to find it. There have been various theories as to what this treasure refers to. One theory is that it's talking about the treasure that was taken from the great Temple of Jerusalem before it was sacked and burned to the ground by the Romans at the end of the Jewish revolt. However, many people contest that and there is no solid proof to show that, because this treasure has never been found. And there are some that even believe that actually the treasure that this scroll is referring to never actually existed. And in fact, that this Copper scroll is a fake. Regardless, it is an extraordinary artifact. It's unique. The only Copper scroll in existence from the Dead Sea Scrolls and an ancient treasure map that talks about undiscovered riches. It all feels very Indiana Jonesy. Perhaps it will be discovered one day. Perhaps more likely, it never will.

[Tristan Hughes]

It's the ancients on history hit. I'm Tristan Hughes, your host, and today we're covering, Yep, you guessed it, the amazing artifact that is the Copper Scroll. This ancient treasure map, very different to the rest of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Now, following that introduction from me, seeing the many strips that make up the Copper scroll in the Jordan Museum today, we now have an interview with one of the leading experts on the Copper scroll and its contents, none other than Dr. Joan Taylor from King's College London. Joan, she's been on the podcast twice before as the expert for an episode about Mary Magdalene and then for another one about Bethlehem in antiquity. Now Joan's back to talk through the story of the Copper Scroll, a story that has quickly become one of my favorites. Enjoy. Joan, it is a pleasure to have you back on the podcast and to do it in person.

[Dr. Joan Taylor]

We are together in the same room. This is amazing. Thank you for having me.

[Tristan Hughes]

The Copper scroll, it's an extraordinary story. Such a mystifying object, the Copper Scrolls.

[Dr. Joan Taylor]

It is a mystifying object and people still don't quite understand it. It's one of those objects that have been found and everyone hailed as absolutely fantastic. A brilliant archaeological discovery and no one really knows what to do with it, and no one knows what it relates to exactly.

[Tristan Hughes]

Always associated with the Dead Sea Scrolls. But Joan, what exactly is the Copper Scroll?

[Dr. Joan Taylor]

So the Copper scroll is a scroll made of copper, which. The simple answer, however, the other Dead Sea Scrolls are not made of copper. They're largely made of a kind of very fine leather sort of manuscript, a parchment manuscript or papyrus found in caves by the Dead Sea. Very momentous discovery from 1949 onwards. These incredible scrolls, largely biblical, all sorts of other bits and pieces. Second Temple Judaism really revealed by these little fragments of text that we knew very little about. So the Dead Sea Scrolls overall are a fantastic discovery. It's a library that illuminates the first century BCE and the first century CE and how people thought at that time. But the Copper scroll is nothing like that, even though it was found in one of the caves where other Dead Sea scrolls were found. It's just a list of finding places of treasure.

[Tristan Hughes]

You've given us away there. But this is. This is one thing to highlight straight away. Although it's always associated with the Dead Sea Scrolls, it is so different to the rest of these scrolls that we have, but. And also discovered alongside those others in these caves, isn't it the site of Qumran? Isn't it? So it's such a. It's a weird story in that it's so different to the rest, and yet it's discovered in a very similar location.

[Dr. Joan Taylor]

It's discovered in exactly the same location in Cave 3Q, as it's called. And this is a cave about 2km north of Qumran, this ancient archaeological site, the site that seems to have been first constructed by Jewish priest kings in the early first century BCE and then taken over by a particular group called the Essenes. I subscribe to that hypothesis.

[Tristan Hughes]

So who are the Essenes?

[Dr. Joan Taylor]

The Essenes are a kind of legal school of Second Temple Judaism. And they had a particular interpretation of Bible and how to do law and philosophy, really. And they had a lifestyle, a distinctive lifestyle that was more concerned with purity than other Jews of their time. So the Essenes were particular, and it seems that they were living at the site of Qumran, and it seems that they were responsible for putting all of these amazing scrolls in caves around the site of Qumran. I think, personally, they were putting them in caves over many years. They were almost burying them for longevity. They were thinking about preserving them for the end time when all would be revealed, because they had the name of God on them and they didn't want to destroy the name of God, so they were carefully burying these sacred scriptures. So there's an attitude of reverence in putting these scrolls in these caves, and we've got 11 caves for sure, we know that there were scrolls placed in. There were probably all sorts of other caves as well, where scrolls were placed. We just don't have the scrolls from those caves. We have maybe bits of pottery or textile, but not the scrolls. But amongst those caves in Cave 3, they discovered not only the typical scrolls of the Dead Sea Scrolls, fragments of different biblical books, and some other unidentified fragments, but they found this Copper scroll. And the amazing thing is that this was found by archaeologists. It was one of the few caves where archaeologists went into a cave and found what was inside it. Most of the Dead Sea Scrolls have been found by Bedouin because this was.

[Tristan Hughes]

The story, wasn't it? That's the story we've done in the previous podcast about the other Dead Sea Scrolls. As you say, they're kind of found by chance in following World War II, isn't it? It's around that time. But this one is actually done with the proper excavation.

[Dr. Joan Taylor]

Exactly. So that should make it fantastic because you've got archaeologists actually going in and doing a proper archaeological excavation. The problem was that in 1952, when the cave was discovered, there was a certain amount of haste about the archaeological excavation and it was never fully published. So the team that went into cave 3Q was led by an archaeologist, Henri de Contenson, a very eminent archaeologist. He had a group with him. They went into the cave and they did some excavation and they took the things out of the cave. But he never fully published a really proper archaeological report with plans and stratigraphy and where exactly each find was located within the cave. And that was partly because people were interested in the contents of the cave. They were interested in what the scrolls were about, but they weren't so interested in all the archaeology and all the kind of information that we now know can be gained from archaeology. So it's rather frustrating in that you have different reports about where exactly the Copper scroll was found within the cave. And that adds to its mystery, because some people like myself, I wonder whether the Copper scroll was placed in the cave sometime after the parchment. The Dead Sea Scrolls, proper, if you want to call them that, were placed in the cave because there's a question about the dating of the Copper scroll.

[Tristan Hughes]

Which we're going to get to.

[Dr. Joan Taylor]

Yes. So it would be so nice to know if it was in a position where you could have put it in some at some point later on in.

[Tristan Hughes]

The cave, because the cave, let's say Cave 3, where the copper scroll is found, I mean, can you kind of paint a picture of what this cave looks like? Are we thinking a big open cave or is this in the middle of an arid landscape? I mean, were there many different chambers?

[Dr. Joan Taylor]

Well, I visited the cave for the first time only a few years ago, and it was really great to go there. I went with the archaeologist Shimon Gibson, and we explored there with my husband Paul as well. And of course, when you go to an archaeological site like that, you have to be very careful. You don't move anything. It's not widely known where it is because you don't want just any old visitor turning up. So you don't get a sign saying, this is cave 3Q. Follow the track. It's not open to the public, but if you do your homework, you can find out where exactly it is. But you have to be very, very respectful of going to a site like this. It's been excavated again quite recently by the Ecole Biblique and other archaeologists who are now putting out a new book, really trying to pull together all of the archaeology of the cave. And I was really following in their footsteps. Steps to just check out what it looked like. Now. The form of the cave now has changed a lot since its early excavation 50 years ago.

[Tristan Hughes]

Wow.

[Dr. Joan Taylor]

It has been. It was re excavated in the 1990s, so various people have gone to the cave and done stuff to it. So it's certainly not pristine. It's not as it was left in 1952, but from what we gather, and I've met Henri de Cotenson in Paris and talked to him about the excavation, as far as we know, it was not immediately visible. They managed to break through a small opening and then a cave opened up to them. And what they saw inside was a pile of pots in the middle of the cave. And, you know, there was rats nests and, you know, it had clearly been entered by vermin that had eaten the parchment, which was why there was not much left of the parchment. But they didn't immediately find the copper scroll because the copper scroll was in a niche and it was hidden by soil. It was covered up by soil. So as they excavated, as they dug around then, the copper scrolls came to light in this little niche. But what is not clear, and Henri de Cottonson indicated this is where the original entrance for the cave was. So was the copper scroll near the front of the cave or around the middle of the cave or at the back of the cave? That just depends on how you reconstruct the cave as it was at the time that the scrolls were Placed in it.

[Tristan Hughes]

And that's also, it's an important point to try and understand where and the context in which it was placed. Which, as you've hinted at, and we'll get to later, leads to the whole dating question of the copper scroll. Now, with the discovery of the copper scroll in that particular cave, this might initially seem like an easy question, but actually this is a mind blowing question in itself. Copper, it's been there for some 2,000 years, just under 2,000 years. When it's discovered. What did it look like? I remember it looked very different.

[Dr. Joan Taylor]

Well, exactly. It was green and it was broken into two rolls. So that in itself is kind of interesting that they didn't roll it up in one. It would have originally been a long copper scroll made of really beautiful, high quality copper.

[Tristan Hughes]

So that's like 99% copper.

[Dr. Joan Taylor]

99% copper. Natural copper with only 1% of tin in it. So most copper today. And I've actually got a piece of copper over there that I was going to show you.

[Tristan Hughes]

Oh, as you do. Yes, absolutely. We'll do a social video at the end.

[Dr. Joan Taylor]

Absolutely. But that has got more tin mixed into it and it's not so pliable. That's the kind of copper that you can buy now. But pure copper is a treasure in itself. So when you think about the treasure of the copper scroll and what the copper scroll means, you've got to remember that the copper scroll itself is a treasure to have this much copper. So whoever had the copper scroll who wanted to put it in the cave and wrote on it, they would have had resources to buy this really, really beautiful copper. Now, in order to make it pliable, it would have been annealed, it would have been heated, it would.

[Tristan Hughes]

So what do you mean by annealed?

[Dr. Joan Taylor]

It has to be dealt with by someone who is a metal specialist. You can't just get a whole lot of copper and think that everything is going to be fine. You can just write on it, just.

[Tristan Hughes]

Hammer it out and yeah, you have.

[Dr. Joan Taylor]

To be careful about it. And I don't know all of the different details of managing copper, but I've read enough to know that you have to have a specialist in how to deal with copper. It's in three sheets. The total length is 2.4 meters. So it's very, very long.

[Tristan Hughes]

2.3 meters.

[Dr. Joan Taylor]

About 2.4 meters.

[Tristan Hughes]

2.4 meters. My apologies.

[Dr. Joan Taylor]

So that's very long. And the three sheets, the reason why it was rolled up in two is that one of the sheets broke. So they had these joins they meant to roll it up altogether, but instead they were so hasty as they rolled it up, one broke off. What's interesting is they didn't go, oh, let's take some time to put it back together again. Let's make sure everything is neat and tidy. They went, fine, it's okay, just roll it up. We'll just deal with it as it is. We'll stick it in the cave, you know, so that indicates something about people doing this in a hurry, which, again, ties in with the fact that there is treasure indicated in the scroll, that they are hiding treasure in the face of some kind of threat. There's a calamity, a future calamity that's quite near to them. They're hiding this treasure. They're putting the place. They've hidden it on this copper scroll, but they're hiding it in a hurry. They're not rolling it up and making it all neat and tidy. When it was found, as I said, it was green. It was also oxidized and totally, totally hard. So when it was found in 1952, people could see on the outside of the scroll that there were Hebrew letters. And the original scholars looking at it were trying to read the sort of mirror writing from the outside of the scroll to see what the contents were, because they were pressed through the copper and you could see the writing on the other side. But they couldn't read the inside of.

[Tristan Hughes]

The scroll because you say oxidized. And that is why, because I was seeing footage from the 1950s. And we'll get to that. You've also inserted the treasure, which we will get to. We're nearing there. But first we need to talk about the unraveling. The oxidized. So originally more than 2 meters long, but because of that oxidization. Is that why it looked so cylinder, like quite crumpled when it was discovered?

[Dr. Joan Taylor]

Yeah, absolutely. It did look like two cylinders completely rolled up. Absolutely as hard as anything. The idea that you could actually open up the copper scroll and read what was inside seemed. How would you do this in the 1950s? Now we have, of course, AI and all sorts of wonderful things. We could probably have done it rather differently. But then they just thought, we've got to read what's inside this. But they thought about it, they talked about it, and it wasn't immediate. It certainly wasn't an immediate thing that they thought, right, let's chop it open.

[Tristan Hughes]

You gotta give them a game away, Joan. So what do they ultimately decide and where? What's the story of how the Copper scroll is well, metallically unraveled.

[Dr. Joan Taylor]

So it was really John Allegro, who was the Jordanian advisor on the Dead Sea Scrolls at that time, very close to the Hashemite royal family. He was based at the University of Manchester, he knew people in Manchester and he knew Henry Wright Baker at the Manchester Institute of Technology. And basically, Wright Baker and Don Allegro worked out what needed to be done. And Wright Baker said, I have a plan and I can cut the scroll open, the two rolls open very carefully with a very fine instrument, a cutting instrument, and I will do it and everything will be well. And John Allegro took wonderful documentary photographs and a video, a video, I should say a film, a cine film, of the opening of the first role. Baker, I think, looks quite calm.

[Tristan Hughes]

That man's got some confidence, doesn't he, if he's literally soaring in to this. I always don't like using the word unique, but it feels this very special object, unlike any others found in the caves. And to try and open it, you're bringing a saw to it. I mean, yeah, he's got some confidence, that guy.

[Dr. Joan Taylor]

I think he must have. He must have had nerves of steel to cut through the copper. The first roll in 1955, the Jordanian sort of hung back a bit on the second roll, just in case it didn't work out too well. And then the second roll was done in 1956. And you can see in the photographs this careful slicing through the roll from outside to the inside. And of course, when he did that, he had no idea what he was slicing through. He had to slice through letters. There was no other alternative. He did it very carefully. And then all the rolls were laid out and finally Don Allegro and others could read them.

[Tristan Hughes]

And that is why today, if you type in the copper scroll, or as I've been very fortunate to do quite recently, go to the New Jordan Museum in Amman and you go to the room where the copper scroll is laid out. It is literally just in strip after strip after strip because of how it was very specially unraveled. And you can see points where, you know, it was bound to happen, that sometimes with the stripping, it's gone through the middle of a particular. Of a particular letter on the scroll. But that is why it is such an interesting artifact. It's how it's laid out as well, in that strip fashion.

[Dr. Joan Taylor]

Yes. Yeah, it's quite beautiful. I think, when you see all the strips together, the way it's displayed, 23 strips now, some wider, some smaller. The ones inside are smaller. It is readable. I think anyone who can read Hebrew can make out letters, can make out a few words. You scrutinize it and you can read it, but the trouble is you can read it in various different ways because the script is strange. So everything about the COP scroll is strange.

[Tristan Hughes]

How do you mean strange? Is it a particular type of Hebrew?

[Dr. Joan Taylor]

It's a particular kind of Hebrew. It's a later form of Hebrew than the rest of the Dead Sea Scrolls, which is also an issue in terms of its dating. It's a mishnaic type of Hebrew. It's got distinctive features of the language, and it's got Greek in it, which is distinctive of later Hebrew as well. But that's the actual content. But the letters are very hard to. Even though you can read Hebrew, it's difficult to know the difference between, say, the letter H or a he and a het is basically the same. There are two types of sound, or a B and an ah look very much the same in the Hebrew. And various other letters look almost identical. A yod and A. Wow. So that's a Y and a W or U. They look the same. And there's distinctive spellings as well to add to it. Almost as if someone wasn't that adept in terms of literacy, this idiosyncratic ways of spelling. So what is going on? Who wrote it? Was it a scribe who just really couldn't do letters properly on copper and just thought, oh, you know, I'll do my best, or was it someone who had a master copy and was trying to copy that onto a replicate system? Copper, who had it already written out on parchment or bits of parchment where they tried to combine different things together in a. In copper writing, it's not usually with a parchment scroll. You would write it with ink. Of course, this is all pressed with three different instruments, two that are straight and one that is curved. And someone was pressing the letters in with these instruments onto the software. Copper. I'm Professor Susanna Lipscomb. And on not just the Tudors from History hit. We do admittedly cover quite a lot of Tudors, from the rise of Henry VII to the death of Henry viii, from Anne Boleyn to her daughter Elizabeth the First, but we also do lots that's not Tudors, murderers, mistresses, pirates and witches. Clues in the title really. So follow not just the Tudors from History hit wherever you get your podcasts.

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[Dr. Joan Taylor]

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[Tristan Hughes]

These guys are organized Marketing team. Did you get those social media posts.

[Ryan Reynolds]

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[Tristan Hughes]

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[Ryan Reynolds]

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[Tristan Hughes]

When this was being deciphered, when you have all of these strips and you're looking at I said sometimes quite enigmatic words they say can be interpreted in different ways. It's not very easy to see, but it can be interpreted. For those people who were deciphering it, who are looking at it, was it a case of just laying out those strips in a line and seeing if it's kind of almost lined up? Because I'm guessing if it was originally kind of a 2 meter long strip, that it's not just One strip, reveal one part of it. The one strip will reveal the beginning of the first line, the second line, the third line, and then you need the next strip and the next strip to read more along the line, the top line, than the second line, and so on.

[Dr. Joan Taylor]

That's right. The strips don't correspond to the columns. All right. So there's 12 columns of the copper scroll, and the cuts are made in the middle of the columns. So in that way, you know, having the scroll written in columns replicates how things are written in parchment. So columns of the Isaiah scroll, for example, the great Isaiah scroll, you can see in the Israel Museum, you have a long strip rolled up, but then people would unroll and read a column and then roll a little bit further and read the next column. So they're replicating that, but in copper, because that's kind of their template. This is how things are written.

[Tristan Hughes]

So generally, I can imagine it differs in places, but is it roughly two strips equals one column of writing? Almost.

[Dr. Joan Taylor]

It depends on the width of the straw.

[Tristan Hughes]

Because it really. Because, of course, when they're. When they were putting the saw to the Copper scroll, they wouldn't have known that. But it's interesting. So it isn't just that. That's clarified something in my mind straight away. It's not just one line along the top, all the way along the top.

[Dr. Joan Taylor]

2.4 meters.

[Tristan Hughes]

Exactly. It is dividing itself into almost subsections of column after column after column. Replicating what it's shown instead in the Dead Sea Scrolls and stuff like that.

[Dr. Joan Taylor]

Exactly. Yes. But they're always cut into. There's always a cut through the columns, sometimes two cuts through one Colum. So. And then, weirdly, there's a bit of space at the very end. So whoever was writing it tries to mash together a lot of letters as they're getting near the end, and then only to find that there's a lot, there's more space. So there was a clear idea about what was going to be in it, but just not necessarily a clear idea of how much space there was right at the very end. And again, that indicates haste. No one's doing this in a very, very careful way. So there's this weird mismatch between extremely expensive material of copper and idiosyncratic, not very good writing that isn't done exceptionally well, neatly. So what's going on there?

[Tristan Hughes]

What is going on? Well, we'll get to that answer because, well, the theories to that in this next part. But first of all, I feel we need to mention, as You've hinted at already the treasure. So it talks about treasure, doesn't it? So, I mean, first of all, Joan, give us an overview of what types of treasure does this scroller talk about? And then we can focus in on a particular example, a particular column.

[Dr. Joan Taylor]

Well, there are 64. Probably 64 fine spots, but there is some discussion about how many fine spots there are. And they are very much fine spots because the instructions are given to someone who is going to find treasure.

[Tristan Hughes]

So this is almost like X marks the spot.

[Dr. Joan Taylor]

It totally is. So go here, dig four cubits down, you will find this. It's designed for someone to uncover something that has been hidden, that is very valuable. And what has been hidden seems to be a large amount of silver. It's silver, but a lot of gold as well. And most likely this is in the form of coins, which was the usual form of silver and gold. But you could get ingots as well. And sometimes we get indications that there are vessels, sometimes mention of clay, some kind of clay receptacle, which ties in with what we know from the Dead Sea Scrolls. Scrolls themselves in Cave 1Q were put in clay vessels. So that's nice. We know that it's the same mentality of the people who were burying the treasure to the people that were burying the scrolls.

[Tristan Hughes]

Is that the version almost of a treasure chest kind of thing back in the time?

[Dr. Joan Taylor]

Sometimes they mention chests.

[Tristan Hughes]

They mention chests as well.

[Dr. Joan Taylor]

We do have actually a chest of treasure, but there's also references to tithe vessels or. Or donations of tithes. And tithes were temple taxes. They were what you gave to the temple, the administrative center of Judea in the first century bce, first century ce, Everyone who lived in Judea was expected to give a certain amount of money to the temple. So we've immediately got this tie in between the temple and the treasure. The temple was like a gigantic bank. A lot of temples in the ancient world were also banks. We don't think of them as banks.

[Tristan Hughes]

Well, Jesus of Nazareth isn't it in the, you know, hence why he goes to the temple and kind of throws that stuff away. Because it was the tax collecting, wasn't it?

[Dr. Joan Taylor]

Well, he knew that this was a place where people gave money. He talks about the widow, the widow's mite, giving a very small coin to the temple funds. Everyone would go to the temple and give money. That was where money was held, that belonged to the nation. It would be used for certain things that would be beneficial to people. That there was temple charity that was dispersed. So it was the Economic system of the nation of Judea. The temple and its administrative functions were a lot about just looking after the nation. It would also sometimes need to fund other things and it could be used badly by various different rulers to do all sorts of things that they shouldn't do. But yeah, it was the treasury of the nation. So if you've got a reference to temple treasure, temple tithes, we're clearly in this world of temple administration. Whoever is writing the Copper scroll has access to that and has the resources to buy the copper. So we've got some link in with the Jerusalem Temple and yet they're being.

[Tristan Hughes]

Quite hasty when they're writing it. You say, well, it seems like they are always put. It seems like. So of course, you can't say absolutely for certain, but let's focus on one particular point of treasure, or at least treasures mentioned as a particular column, because I know you wanted to talk in detail and it's great talking, especially in parts. Focus in parts on the story of the Copper Scroll. And we go to column one, if I'm correct, Joan, column one. Because this has got some interesting examples on it.

[Dr. Joan Taylor]

Well, I think. Yes, Nothing beats actually looking at it in detail.

[Tristan Hughes]

You have got one here. What I've got not column one. I must clarify, you haven't got the copy column one here.

[Dr. Joan Taylor]

Here with us, unfortunately, there is a replica of it in Manchester in the Manchester University Museum in their storeroom. They've got a lovely replica that they made before it was opened. So if you want to see it the way it was before it was opened, it's there. It's not on display at the moment because they're doing renovation works. But I have seen that replica and held that replica and they really try and make it exactly as it was. But yes, so imagine you've opened up the Copper scroll finally, you've got the column one of the Copper scroll and you're reading it and you're managing to read it. What you see is these lines of Hebrew letters. There's no spaces between them. There's a couple of cuts in the column. You've joined them together and you read up off from the top, from the right hand side, the first words.

[Tristan Hughes]

So is it right to left?

[Dr. Joan Taylor]

It's right to left. In the first column of the Copper scroll, you read from the right to the left and go down through it. And what you read is in. I won't read out the Hebrew in the ruin, which is in the valley of Achor, under the steps leading to the east at 40 half brick cubits. There is a chest of silver and its vessels a weight of 17 talents, followed by the Greek letters in English, K, E, N, ken, kappa, epsilon and nun. Nun. Yes. So that is how the Copper scroll begins. It doesn't have any introduction. It assumes whoever has found the Copper scroll and is finding the spots knows what this is about and also knows where the Valley of Acor is and can identify the ruin. So I'm reading out from Emile poish's translation of 2015, which has now become the standard translation of the Copper scroll, and it seems to be pretty well agreed upon that this is how it reads. But this in itself is such a mystery. You just. Okay, in the ruin, which is in.

[Tristan Hughes]

The Valley of Akor, is that not a name that is known today? Is it a mystery, as in we don't know what the Valley of Accor is?

[Dr. Joan Taylor]

Well, unfortunately, after 2,000 years, it would be so lovely if we could go, oh, yes, the Valley of Ahor. There it is. But even though it's mentioned in the Bible and other people later on, like eusebius in the 4th century, mentions the Valley of.

[Tristan Hughes]

They do mention the Valley of Acre.

[Dr. Joan Taylor]

They do mention the Valley of Acor. It's not clear exactly which of the valleys somewhere near Jericho it actually refers to. So we have a range of valleys that the ruin could relate to. One of the things that is quite interesting, though, is there is mention of steps in a valley. And if you've got steps in a valley, you would think actually of a bridge. So archaeologists might be well served thinking about which valleys going into Jericho, because we are in the environment of Jericho through the clues of different bits and pieces of the Copper scroll might have had a bridge.

[Tristan Hughes]

Forgive me, forgive me, it might be a silly question, but why do you think of a bridge with steps rather than, let's say, steps ascending up a side of the mountain on the cliffside or one of the valleys kind of thing.

[Dr. Joan Taylor]

Good question. Now, one of the things about valleys in Judea, in Palestine generally, is that they fill with water, right?

[Tristan Hughes]

Okay.

[Dr. Joan Taylor]

They're flood waters, really, from rainfall up into hills, and then they go down through these wadis, as they're called, into the main valleys like the Jordan Valley or the Dead Sea. So if you've got a valley, you don't build a structure at the bottom of the valley. So it's definitely not a building with steps going up to it. It will be a bridge over a valley with steps going up on some sides. So there's little clues there. The more you go into Every part of the Copper scroll you can think, okay, what are they really referring to? How can we visualize what they're seeing? But certainly there's lots of indications that the person who was expected to find this treasure is part of the same milieu as the person who has written this and knows where a lot of sites are that we do not know.

[Tristan Hughes]

Because I must admit, Jonas, were also listening to that one. And I'll ask if it's similar with other columns. It seems it's a very methodical approach. It lays out the general area, as you say, an area that the person who was reading it or expected to read it would. Would know. The Valley of Accor. Then it goes on to highlight a particular area there. And then it gives you almost the specific instructions of where to dig. X marks a spot and what you would find.

[Dr. Joan Taylor]

Exactly.

[Tristan Hughes]

It's very. Is that repeated again and again?

[Dr. Joan Taylor]

Yes, that is the formula that is repeated over and over and over. It's. Here you are, this is what you're seeing. Look at that ruin count certain amount of cubits, a cubit with about 40 cm or half cubit or you know, this is a half brick cubit. And then you have to go somewhere. It's not necessarily digging. I think people with the Copper scroll sometimes think, oh, we just have to dig. Sometimes it seems to be along a watercourse and you find a particular stone and you go under the stone. It seems to be from the position of the person. So are you looking sometimes up rather than thinking about digging down? If you're in a ruin, it might be. You look at a particular part of the ruin upwards. So there's no clue about whether we're looking up or down. But somehow it's supposed to be obvious to the person standing in a particular location that the Copper scroll writer has indicated.

[Tristan Hughes]

Thanks for listening to the ancients. You can get all history hit podcasts ad free early access and bonus episodes along with hundreds of original history documentaries by subscribing. Head over to historyhit.com subscribe Ryan Reynolds.

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[Tristan Hughes]

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[Tristan Hughes]

Once again, such a special document because of all of that information and, you know, so much wealth being talked about in such a pretty strange way in how it's written. I must admit, given that translation and given how you've explained how people who know the area and archaeologists who've examined this work can start, even though the areas are not known today, get more of a hint as to what they're talking about. Have archaeologists in particular, have any of them gone and tried to look for this treasure?

[Dr. Joan Taylor]

Indeed they have. Not Indiana Jones, but John Allegro himself. He was absolutely fascinated by the Copper Scroll. You can imagine, as a scholar, to discover this and for him to be so connected with the Jordanian royal family, they helped him. There was a British expedition, the Dead Sea Scrolls Expedition, that he ran over several years, in fact, going out and trying to identify the places and he was in. Allegro was enormously knowledgeable about the Bible and Bible places. He had resources, he had immense expertise in terms of reading Hebrew and other languages. And he went from one place to the next and he didn't find anything. He really thought that he was on the trail of where these places were. But other places, other people have gone out. There was a particular location, the Cave of the Column, that was exciting to a certain group at one time, and they excavated in that cave and they found various things, but not the treasure. And it's just one of those things that it's not as clear as you wish it would be. It's possible that all of the locations are actually in quite a small area. Sometimes people have been looking around Jerusalem because it seems like there's a reference to the Kidron at one point.

[Tristan Hughes]

Sorry, the Kidron is.

[Dr. Joan Taylor]

The Kidron is a valley that goes all the way from Jerusalem to the Dead Sea. So which side of the Kidron are you supposed to be looking at? If it's the Dead Seas side, you're some way south of Qumran. So maybe we've got locations in between the Kidron and Jericho, because Jericho is a location that's clearly mentioned in the Copper Scroll. But anything in relation to Jericho is hard to to identify.

[Tristan Hughes]

And is it largely believed by archaeologists that even though it hasn't been discovered yet, that the treasures that this scroll is referring to, that they were real?

[Dr. Joan Taylor]

Unfortunately, not everyone thinks they are real. In fact, when Joseph Millick published the first official edition of the Copper scroll in the DJD series, the Discoveries in the Judean Desert, and wrote about it, he said it's probably not real. And the reason was partly because at that time they thought of the Essenes, the people who lived at Qumran, as very much a breakaway sect who had nothing to do with the temple, who were not in line with the thinking of the people who were in charge of the temple, and they had their own sort of alternative ways of doing things away from the temple temple. But now I think that view isn't quite so secure. The people who were at Qumran, even if you don't think of them as Essenes, they seem to have an awful lot of stuff in the Dead Sea Scrolls that is very concerned with the temple. If you do think of them as the Essenes, I, for example, think of the Essenes as being quite connected with the temple, but they just had a higher standard of purity when they went to the temple in terms of how they operated at the temple. So it doesn't mean that you are totally out of step with the temple if you're in a scene. But still, why have you got the temple treasure?

[Tristan Hughes]

Well, I mean, you've kind of. Well, I guess this is the theory that we should go on to now before we kind of delve more into that, Joan, is where is it theorized as to where this treasure came from? Because I know you want to Talk about column 1.9 as well, and this all seems to link together at this time, right?

[Dr. Joan Taylor]

Yes. So a little bit further down on column one, it's the fourth find spot. This is Puesh's edition as well. In the mound of Cochleet, which is a site that repeats in the copper scroll, there are tithe vessels consisting of flasks and ephods. Ephods are priestly aprons, so they are connected with what priests wore when they went about their business. And in the temple, the total of the tithe and the treasury of the sabbatical year, and a second disqualified tithe. This is very, very technical stuff in terms of what temple operations were about. You know, the sabbatical year, you're getting tithes from the sabbatical year. Second disqualified tithe. They're no good. You've transferred the tithe, actual products into money. Its opening is on the northern edge of the channel, six cubits in the direction of the frigidarium of the bath. And then further Greek letters. Well, my goodness, there's so much in that one fine spot that indicates that it was connected with the temple. It was treasure stored in the temple. And yet there's also treasure from the temple that's missing. If it was just hiding everything that was valuable in the temple, if it.

[Tristan Hughes]

Is from the temple, give us a bit of the historical context. Why might it be that they are now deciding to hide treasures from the temple in Jerusalem?

[Dr. Joan Taylor]

Right, so the temple treasure contained a lot of money, but it also had all sorts of golden vessels. And there's nothing about the golden vessels of the sanctuary that has been hidden here. So I think that whoever had this treasure either didn't have all of the paraphernalia of the sanctuary or decided not to hide it. And that's curious to me, but they're hiding all sorts of little bits and pieces of the second disqualified tithe. You know, they've labeled it, they know what it is, and they're putting it in this hiding place. So if we're looking through the history of Judea, there are actually all sorts of times when people in Jerusalem might have wanted to hide some of the treasure from the temple, even if not all of it, or didn't have access to all of it. So from 63 BCE, when the Roman general Pompey comes into Jerusalem.

[Tristan Hughes]

Pompey the Great?

[Dr. Joan Taylor]

Yes, Pompey the great. Rival, later on, friend or not friend, of Julius Caesar, he was basically invited as a great Western power to sort out a civil war in Judea. There were two rival high priests and they were fighting it out, and one of them wanted Pompey to come in and support him. Pompey came through and actually laid siege to Jerusalem and destroyed various forts in his path, destroyed a couple of places close to Jericho. And you could have imagined that some people supporting this particular high priest wanted to save some of the treasure from Jerusalem and hid it at that point. Then in 40 BCE, another rival high priest comes and wants to dislodge the high priest in Jerusalem. This particular high priest was supported by the Parthians, the Iranians, and goes into Jerusalem and actually takes the high priest there off to Parthian lands.

[Tristan Hughes]

This captured Jerusalem is also the one where Herod the Great goes to Cleopatra and then Rome, isn't it?

[Dr. Joan Taylor]

Exactly. So this is 40 BCE, Herod flees, and it's Mattatius, Antigonus. So he comes in and takes over. So at that point, too, there's a crisis in Jerusalem. You can imagine people trying to save treasure from Jerusalem. If they could get out, they were saving treasure. Then all sorts of things happened. When Herod died and 4 BCE, there was revolution in Judea. There were people who took over the temple. At that time, the Judean rebels took over the temple Herod's son, Archelaus, really couldn't handle it and went to Rome. And there had to be. There had to be Roman legionaries come down from Syria and quash the rebellion for Rome. So temple treasure could have been taken out of the temple at that point in 4 BCE, in 70, the Romans came in again.

[Tristan Hughes]

This is the big one.

[Dr. Joan Taylor]

This is the one that everyone knows about. And so people get locked into that idea. It was all about 70. In 70, there was a siege. Vespasian's army, Titus, laid siege to Jerusalem. The Roman army came through in 68, destroyed things in Jericho, destroyed Qumran, then went on to Jerusalem, laid siege. But at that point, Josephus, the historian who talks about that particular episode, he says people couldn't get their treasure out of Jerusalem. The siege was so fierce that not even their own people couldn't escape. And they couldn't escape with their treasure. And they buried it in their houses. And actually, in terms of Roman propaganda, they very much claim to have got all of the temple treasure. They took it to Rome, and you can see it in the Arch of Titus in Rome to this day. The Romans parading the temple treasure, including now the golden artifacts, the menorah, the golden candlestick, and various other sacred artifacts from the sanctuary. So they have got that treasure. So it's unlikely it was the treasure of 70 CE, but I'm guessing.

[Tristan Hughes]

So is that one big theory that some people are always saying, because they get hooked on the Great Jewish Revolt and the fall of that temple, that they think that, oh, maybe some treasure escaped, maybe some people escaped that siege and the Romans didn't take it all, and then that becomes part of the treasure the Copper scroll is talking about. But as you've highlighted there, what seem, what maybe people have overlooked is that there are events earlier in the timeline when treasure could have been taken out of the great Temple. If it refers to treasure from the temple in the Copper scroll, it could be earlier.

[Dr. Joan Taylor]

And that would fit in better with the dating of the actual Dead Sea Scrolls being in the first century bce, largely. But there's also another alternative.

[Tristan Hughes]

Okay, great, great.

[Dr. Joan Taylor]

The other alternative is to push it further in time into the second century century. And I have written an article saying that that is quite a likely scenario. I'm not absolutely 100% fixed on it, but if we're going to think about a scenario where people are gathering together temple tithes and temple money, and yet are in this location, sort of around the Dead Sea, Jericho, and not in Jerusalem, because you kind of expect Temple Treasure to be hidden closer to Jerusalem. Sorry, that's. I just. It bothers me that it is around Jericho.

[Tristan Hughes]

So how far away from that, from Jerusalem is that then, roughly?

[Dr. Joan Taylor]

Is it 25 km, something like that?

[Tristan Hughes]

It's a bit of a distance, yeah.

[Dr. Joan Taylor]

But Jericho is not Jerusalem. So if you're hiding quickly from Jerusalem, I would imagine that you'd go to places around Jerusalem, Bethlehem example, or, you know, there's lots of caves around about Jerusalem you could have hid treasure in. But this is quite a distance away. Dead Sea is quite a distance away. Jericho is quite a distance away. We know that there were priests in Jericho that continued on. It was a priestly city, so priests having something to do with making sure that treasure was put away would make sense. But one of the things that's been pointed out actually by Jesper Hohenhoen, who's done another edition of the Copper scroll, is that the landscape of the scroll is a very deserted, ruined landscape. If you're just reading it for landscape, it's ruin after ruin after ruin. It's not occupied towns. And that seems to indicate that there was a devastation again. A devastation. You could maybe link up with the Parthians or maybe link up with what Pompeii did. But we know that the Romans, when they came in to put down the second revolt in the year 130 to 136, was the bar Kokhba revolt. Isn't this the Bar Kokhba revolt? That was a major Judean revolt against Rome. They wanted to rebuild the temple. They clearly had the funds to rebuild the temple. They were likely still doing things in terms of temple cultic operations. They issued a coin which talks about a high priest called Eleazar in the Bar Kokhba period. So they still have the temple mentality. They issue coins showing the temple that they are going to rebuild in Jerusalem, but they don't actually do it. And ultimately the Romans come in and utterly devastate Judea. They destroy every single village and town in Judea. It's such a destruction. They kill hundreds of thousands of people and enslave others. It is one of the most atrocious things that happened in the ancient world. What the Romans did to destroy Judea as a concept in the middle of the second century and they talk about it, diocese talks about it in this way. The devastation was huge. So if you've got that kind of event happening and you can see the Romans coming and destroying everything in their path as they put down the revolt, the priestly class and Jericho, who were still hanging on to the temple treasures, hopeful of the rebuilding of the temple, would then want to hide them away and hope that someone would find them in the future of their own ilk and then rebuild the temple.

[Tristan Hughes]

So basically of all those theories, so you would argue that the Copper Scrolls is created in a hurry. Almost as the Romans are approaching, they're in Jericho or somewhere near there, and they decide to hide the treasure in that area and hopefully come back, retrieve it in time, retrieve the treasure and continue it once this, almost this sweeping Armageddon has passed.

[Dr. Joan Taylor]

It's rebuilding the nation. It's the hope of rebuilding the nation. There's a lot of hope in the Copper scroll, but there's also a pragmatism, I think, in that it is made of copper. And the reason I think it's made of copper is for longevity. It will survive a cataclysm. Copper will not melt at a low temperature. It will be okay for years to come. So it's a long range thinking in terms of the Copper scroll, they're thinking of the future of rebuilding in the future of having this money for rebuilding.

[Tristan Hughes]

I mean, it is such an intriguing object. I guess my last kind of question is, should we call it a Dead Sea scroll then?

[Dr. Joan Taylor]

It is a Dead Sea scroll in that it is found by the Dead Sea in a cave by the Dead Sea. So yes, it is a Dead Sea Scroll. It's just a very unusual one.

[Tristan Hughes]

Joan, this has been fantastic. It's been wonderful to do this episode in person. And it just goes for me to say thank you so much much for taking the time to come back on the podcast today.

[Dr. Joan Taylor]

Thank you very much for having me.

[Tristan Hughes]

Well, there you go. There was Dr. Joan Taylor talking you through the story of the Copper scroll, this amazing artifact and part whether an anomaly, but still part of the Dead Sea Scrolls. I hope you enjoyed today's episode. Thank you for listening to this episode of the Ancients. Please follow this show on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. It really helps us and you'll be doing us a big favour. Don't forget you can also listen to us and all of History Hit's podcasts ad free and watch hundreds of TV documentaries when you [e-mail] subscribe as a special gift. You can also get 50% off your first three months when you use code.

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