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Article: Fresh search for Dead Sea scrolls
- Article from:
- The Independent (London, England)
- Article date:
- December 19, 1995
- Author:
CopyrightCopyright 1995 The Independent - London. Provided by ProQuest LLC. (Hide copyright information)
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PATRICK COCKBURN
Qumran
In a deep ravine beside the ruins of the 2,000-year-old
settlement of Qumran, Israeli archaeologists yesterday started
excavating three caves in the hope of finding more fragments of the
Dead Sea scrolls. It is the first significant dig at the site since
1956 when the last of 11 caves containing ancient biblical and
non-biblical documents was discovered by bedouin who saw a bat fly
into a crevice in a cliff face.
"I saw there were very many trails," says Hanan Eshel, an
archaeologist from the Bar-Ilan university near Tel Aviv, who first
realised the significance of the caves in 1993. He points to narrow
but distinct paths through the stony marl which makes up the ...