Dead Sea Scroll Fragment

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Amos 3:4-5, circa 150 BC

The Dead Sea Scrolls (DSS) are the oldest known manuscripts of the Old Testament. They were produced by a Jewish group that lived at Qumran on the northwest shore of the Dead Sea from the mid-2nd century BC until the Jewish Revolt in AD 68. With the Roman army attacking towns in Judea to quell the revolt, the Qumran group decided to flee their settlement. They stored their library of scrolls in nearby caves. They probably hoped to return for them later, but never did. The scrolls remained in the caves until discovered by a bedouin in 1946. Over the next decade, ten more caves containing scrolls from Qumran were located.

This fragment was found in Cave 4 in 1952 by a bedouin family, who sold it to a Bethlehem antiquities dealer known as Kando. It remained in the hands of the Kando family in Switzerland until 2002. From 2002 to 2004 it was held by a private collector in the United States. It was bought by another collector - the present owner - in 2004.

In 2005, the passage on the fragment was tentatively identified as Amos 3:4-5 by Hanan and Ester Eshel, noted Israeli DSS scholars. It was sent to the University of Southern California in the fall of 2008 for a digital photography session. It is currently awaiting confirmation and publication.

This is one of only a few dozen DSS fragments in private ownership in the world. No more than a dozen individuals in the United States own fragments. All of the other 19,000 DSS fragments are in museums, primarily the Rockefeller Museum in Jerusalem and the Shrine of the Book at the Jerusalem Museum.

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