Archaeologists Find a Twelfth Dead Sea Scroll Cave—Without Scrolls

The Dead Sea Scrolls are called that because they were discovered in caves in the Negev desert, not far from the Dead Sea, in the vicinity of the ancient community of Qumran. For some time, eleven caves have been known to have contained Jewish parchments from the Second Temple period. Now archaeologists have found one more, but believe the scrolls in it were taken by Bedouin in the middle of the last century. Ruth Schuster writes:

The cave lies in the stark desert cliff west of Qumran, near the northwestern shore of the Dead Sea. . . . If [the archaeologists] are right, it is the first new “scroll cave” to be identified in over 60 years. Evidence that the cave once housed scrolls is indirect. A number of lidded pottery jars of a type typical of the Second Temple period (between 530 BCE and 70 CE) were found concealed in niches along the walls of the cave and deep inside a long tunnel at its rear, say the archaeologists. But the jars were all broken and their contents were removed.

Why accuse modern Bedouin? Because the archaeologists also found two iron pickaxe heads from the 1950s that had been left inside the tunnel, presumably for reuse. Cave 8 had been the same—scroll jars, but no parchments, were found. At least none with writing. One jar in Cave 12 did contain a rolled up parchment, but it was blank. . . .

Aside from the shattered jars and scroll debris, the archaeologists found an elaborate stamp seal made of the semi-precious stone carnelian, and evidence that prehistoric man had also once dwelled in these cliff-side desert caves.

Read more at Haaretz

More about: Archaeology, Bedouin, Dead Sea Scrolls, History & Ideas

 

What a Strategic Victory in Gaza Can and Can’t Achieve

On Tuesday, the Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant met in Washington with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. Gallant says that he told the former that only “a decisive victory will bring this war to an end.” Shay Shabtai tries to outline what exactly this would entail, arguing that the IDF can and must attain a “strategic” victory, as opposed to merely a tactical or operational one. Yet even after a such a victory Israelis can’t expect to start beating their rifles into plowshares:

Strategic victory is the removal of the enemy’s ability to pose a military threat in the operational arena for many years to come. . . . This means the Israeli military will continue to fight guerrilla and terrorist operatives in the Strip alongside extensive activity by a local civilian government with an effective police force and international and regional economic and civil backing. This should lead in the coming years to the stabilization of the Gaza Strip without Hamas control over it.

In such a scenario, it will be possible to ensure relative quiet for a decade or more. However, it will not be possible to ensure quiet beyond that, since the absence of a fundamental change in the situation on the ground is likely to lead to a long-term erosion of security quiet and the re-creation of challenges to Israel. This is what happened in the West Bank after a decade of relative quiet, and in relatively stable Iraq after the withdrawal of the United States at the end of 2011.

Read more at BESA Center

More about: Gaza War 2023, Hamas, IDF