4. Bezalel Porten, Archives from Elephantine: The Life of an Ancient Jewish Military Colony (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1968).
5. Robert Eisenman and Michael Wise, The Dead Sea Scrolls Uncovered (New York: Penguin Books, 1993).
6. Why the ‘Admonitions’ document should be written in cryptic form is none too clear. In itself it appears fairly innocuous, but it does allude to ‘ways of achieving long life’ and ‘the hidden things of the testimony’ that can be understood by examining the past. Perhaps within the text there is an encrypted message.
7. The Old Testament was translated into Greek from Hebrew versions (maintained by Jews settled in Alexandria), in c.320 BCE. The New Testament was copied by the early Christians in Alexandria, c.150–200 CE. They added six signs from Demotic Egyptian for sounds not available in Greek.
8. Ian Shaw and Paul Nicholson, British Museum Dictionary of Ancient Egypt (London: Published for the Trustees of the British Museum by British Museum Press, c.1995); R.J. Gillings, Mathematics in the Time of the Pharaohs (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1972).
9. Allegro, The Treasure of the Copper Scroll; Florentino Garcia Martinez, The Dead Sea Scrolls Translated (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1994); Geza Vermes, The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls in English (New York: Penguin Press, 1997); Albert Wolters, The Copper Scroll: Overview, Text and Translation (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1996).
10. Vermes, The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls in English.
11. Jozef Milik. Interview by author. Tape recording. Paris, France. 8 November 1998.
12. Henri Gauthier, Dictionnaire des Noms Géographiques Contenus dans les Textes Hiéroglyphiques (Paris: La Société Royale de Geographie d’Egypte, 1925); Aristide Calderini, Dizionario dei Nomi Geografici e Topografici dell’ Egitto Greco-Romano (Cisalpino-Goliardica, 1935–1980); Alan H. Gardiner, Ancient Egyptian Onomastica (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1947); Erich Lüddeckens, Demotisches Namenbuch, Auftrage der Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur in Mainz (Wisebaden: Reichert, 1980–); Wolfgan Helck and Eberhard Otto, Lexikon der Agyptologie (Wiesbaden: O. Harrassowitz, 1975–); John Baines and Jaromir Malek, Atlas of Ancient Egypt (New York: Facts on File, 1985). Tübinger Atlas des Vorderen Orients (University of Tübingen, Wiesbaden: Reichert, 1977– ).
13. This was confirmed by Dr A. R. David, Reader in Egyptology at The Manchester Museum (in correspondance with the author, 18 January 1999), who stated that:
There is no Greek equivalent of Akhenaten. His previous name, before he changed it to show his allegiance to Aten, was Amenhotep IV. The Greek version of Amenhotep was Amenophis. Also, there is no Greek equivalent of the city, Akhetaten. I am not aware that there is any reference to either Akhenaten or Akhetaten in Greek literature, because the king and the city were obliterated from history until the site of Tell el-Amarna (Akhetaten) was rediscovered in recent times.
14. N. de G. Davies, The Rock Tombs of El Amarna – Part II (London: The Egypt Exploration Fund, 1905).
15. H. Frankfort and J. D. S. Pendlebury, The City of Akhenaten – Part II (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1933).
16. Allegro, The Treasure of the Copper Scroll.
17. Shaw and Nicholson, British Museum Dictionary of Ancient Egypt (http://touregypt.net/suntempl.htm).
18. Roland de Vaux, Archaeology and the Dead Sea Scrolls (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1959); Frankfort and Pendlebury, The City of Akhenaten – Part II.
Various designs of jars found at Qumran and nearby Ain Feshkha are illustrated in de Vaux’s book. They bear remarkable similarity, in design, size and colouring, to pottery found in the Amarna area of Egypt, dating from the Eighteenth Dynasty and the period of Akhenaten. Particularly good examples of this correlation can be seen in the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology at University College London – notably Catalogue No. UC 19153, a late Eighteenth Dynasty storage jar found at Tell el Yahudiyeh, north of Heliopolis.
19. de G. Davies, The Rock Tombs of El Amarna – Part II.
20. Manos, the Hands of Fate (http://www.cs.colostate.edu/catlin).
21. de G. Davies, The Rock Tombs of El Amarna – Part II; N. de G. Davies, The Rock Tombs of El Amarna – Part V, (London: The Egypt Exploration Fund, 1908).
22. Ibid.
23. Paul Fenton, Genizah Fragments, Taylor-Schechter Genizah Research Unit (Cambridge: University of Cambridge, 1981–82; http://www.cam.ac.uk/Libraries/Taylor-Schechter.
24. R. H. Charles, Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament II (London: Clarendon Press, 1913).
25. J. Pouilly, La Regle de la Communaute de Qumran: Son Evolution Litteraire (Paris: Gabalda Press, 1913).
26. H. H. Rowley, ‘The Teacher of Righteousness and the Dead Sea Scrolls’, Bulletin of the John Rylands Library 40, 1957.
27. Shaw and Nicholson, British Museum Dictionary of Ancient Egypt.
28. de Vaux, Archaeology and the Dead Sea Scrolls.
29. de G. Davies, The Rock Tombs of El Amarna – Part II.
30. Ibid.
31. There are no obvious queenly candidates who had a tomb built for them associated with either the First or Second Temple in Jerusalem, and certainly not with the Qumran-Essenes. The only remotely possible queens of Israel who could be candidates are Bathsheba – the wife of King David (who had Uriah the Hittite killed in order to marry her); Jezebel – the Baal-worshipping wife of King Ahab c.840 BCE; and her daughter, Athaliah, who ruled in her own right and was also a canvasser on behalf of Baal.
32. Geoffrey Thorndike Martin, The Royal Tomb at El-Amarna –The Objects (London: Egypt Exploration Society, 1974).
33. N. de G. Davies, The Rock Tombs of El Amarna – Part I (London: The Egypt Exploration Fund, 1903).
34. Shaw and Nicholson, British Museum Dictionary of Ancient Egypt.
35. de G. Davies, The Rock Tombs of El Amarna – Part II.
36. W. M. F. Petrie, Tell el-Amarna (London: Luzac & Co., 1894).
37. Frankfort and Pendlebury, The City of Akhenaten – Part II.
38. N. de G. Davies, The Rock Tombs of El Amarna – Part III (London: The Egypt Exploration Fund, 1905).
39. de G. Davies, The Rock Tombs of El Amarna – Part II.
40. S. Goranson, ‘Further Reflections on the Copper Scroll’, International Symposium on the Copper Scroll, The University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology, 8–11 September 1996.
41. Allegro’s translation of ‘…tithe vessels and figured coins’ is problematic. His translation would certainly exclude fourteenth century BCE Egypt as a location, and probably the First Temple at Jerusalem too, because the earliest known coins date from seventh century BCE Anatolia (Turkey) and were rather crude blob-like gold or silver units. The use of figured coins spread outward to central Mediterranean areas, but they were not struck in Egypt until Greek influences arrived around 320 BCE. For this reason the translations by Albert Wolters (‘…vessels of tribute’), or Geza Vermes (‘…gold and vessels of offering’), are preferred. In general John Allegro uses the term ‘tithes’ where other translators use the term ‘offerings’ or ‘tributes’. The practice of tithe contributions to the Temple was not unknown in Egypt. Clear examples come from honey, meat and wine, destined as tithe offerings to Aten at Akhetaten. On tithe offerings of wine the formulatory docketed phrasing is ‘in the basin of…’, a phrasing frequently copied in the Copper Scroll. See J. D. S. Pendlebury, The City of Akhenaten – Part III (London: Egypt Exploration Society, 1951).
42. de G. Davies, The Rock Tombs of El Amarna – Part I.
43. References to resins and oils in the Copper Scroll indicate that their use was as an offering, whereas in Biblical times unguents were used to anoint a ruler or consecrate holy vessels. This difference in usage can be related to ritual in the Great Temple at Akhetaten rather than the Temple at Jerusalem. There are several inscriptional examples of unguent being offered by Akhenaten – in the ‘Jubilee Scene’, in the Fitzwilliam Museum at Cambridge, England, and on an
alabaster slab excavated at Tel el-Amarna, now in the Cairo Museum. See Cyril Aldred, Akhenaten and Nefertiti (New York: The Brooklyn Museum, 1973).
44. Shortly after 1892 the Egyptian Department of Antiquities uncovered a painted pavement in the village of Hawata and removed it to the Cairo Museum. See de G. Davies, The Rock Tombs of El Amarna – Part I.
45. Eugene Ulrich, ‘4QJoshua and Joshua’s First Altar in the Promised Land’, in G.J. Brooke and F.G. Martinez (eds.), New Qumran Texts and Studies (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1994).
46. Ephraim Stern, ‘Gerizim’, The New Encyclopedia of Archaeological Excavation in the Holy Land (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993).
CHAPTER 16 THE LEGACY OF AKHENATEN
1. Titus Lucretius Carus, 99–55 BCE. From The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Quotations (London: Oxford University Press, 1967).
2. Roland de Vaux, Archaeology and the Dead Sea Scrolls (London: Oxford University Press, 1959).
3. Numerous ostraca (pot sherds) and relics have been excavated from the site of Qumran and they all tend to confirm the monastic lifestyle and rituals of the Essene Community described in their scrolls, and by contemporary writers such as Philo, Pliny and Josephus. One such fascinating recent discovery was made in February 1996, by a team of eighteen treasure-seeking Americans using a bulldozer! They literally stumbled upon two first century CE sherds in a wall facing the Qumran Community’s cemetery. Whilst the method of ‘excavation’ is to be deplored, the significance of the find is considerable in that it provides the first non-Dead Sea Scroll tangible evidence that the people at Qumran considered themselves a ‘Yahad ’ – a ‘Community’.
The larger piece, written in Hebrew, is part of a ‘Deed of Gift’ document describing the assets – a house and its surroundings in Jericho, a slave, valuable fruits – that an individual intended to donate to the Community when he joined. There is also a description of the process of entry into the Community involving the giving up of money and worldly goods as a requirement of membership. The phrasing of the Deed is very similar to that used in fifth century BCE papyri found at Elephantine, in Egypt.
E. Eshel, ‘The Newly Discovered Qumran Ostraca’, International Symposium on the Copper Scroll, Manchester–Sheffield Centre for Dead Sea Scrolls Research, 8–11 September 1996.
4. Paul Fenton, Genizah Fragments, Taylor–Schechter Genizah Research Unit (Cambridge: University of Cambridge, 1981–82); http://www.cam.ac.uk/Libraries/Taylor-Schechter. Geza Vermes, The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls in English – 1QS, 4Q265 (London: Allen Lane, 1997).
5. In 1898, 140,000 fragments of the ‘Genizah’ were donated to the University of Cambridge Library to form the Taylor–Schechter Collection; these now constitute 75 per cent of the Genizah fragments known to exist worldwide.
6. Fragments written on paper are post-eleventh century, those on vellum (leather) are dated between the eighth and eleventh centuries, whilst examples on papyrus are from the sixth to the eighth centuries.
7. Elam lay east of Babylonia, in the modern state of Khuzistan. Its capital was Susa, probably the Shushan of the Book of Esther.
8. O. Eissfeldt, ‘Theologische Literaturzeitung’, No. 10, 1949, translated by G. R. Driver, The Hebrew Scrolls from the Neighbourhood of Jericho and the Dead Sea (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1951).
9. Could this ceremony be the forerunner of the ‘Barmitzvah’, where a Jewish boy, at the age of thirteen, makes a public commitment to his faith and reads from the Torah in front of a synagogue congregation?
10. The three lower orders of the Masonic movement are known as craft degrees – of which there are about 300,000 members in Great Britain alone, where the modern movement was founded in about 1600 CE. Only a selected few members are ‘invited’ by a Supreme Council to rise above the Third Degree. After that comes the Fourth Degree, ‘Secret Master’, and Fifth Degree, ‘Perfect Master’. Progress thereafter is through various degrees, many with biblical titles – Thirteenth Degree ‘Royal Arch (of Enoch)’, Sixteenth Degree ‘Prince of Jerusalem’, Twenty-fourth Degree ‘Prince of the Tabernacle’, Twenty-eighth Degree ‘Knight of the Sun’, and up to the Thirty-second Degree, ‘Sublime Prince of the Royal Secret’, and the highest Thirty-third Degree, ‘Grand Inspector General’. Stephen King, The Brotherhood (London: Granada Publishing Ltd., 1984).
11. Robert Eisenman and Michael Wise, The Dead Sea Scrolls Uncovered (New York: Penguin Books, 1993).
12. The Qumran-Essenes would have had works in their possession whose contents were contrary to their own beliefs. The Dead Sea Scrolls appeared to constitute an archival library of reference material, as well as a place for the Essenes’ own works.
13. Yigael Yadin, The Message of the Scrolls (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1957).
14. Stephen Pfann, ‘The Corpus of Manuscripts Written in the Qumran Cryptic Scripts’, The Dead Sea Scrolls – Fifty Years After Their Discovery: Proceedings of the Jerusalem Congress July 20–25, 1997 (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society in cooperation with The Shrine of the Book, Israel Museum, 2000).
15. Adolfo Roitman, A Day at Qumran – The Dead Sea Sect and Its Scrolls (Jerusalem: The Israel Museum, 1997).
16. Sir Ernest Alfred Wallis Budge, The Mummy: A Handbook of Egyptian Funerary Archaeology (London: Constable, 1989).
17. The New Year (Rosh Hashanah) and Chanukah (celebrating the rededication of the Second Temple c.164 BCE) were festivals developed after the destruction of the First Temple. Other festivals are mentioned in the Temple Scroll, but it is not certain that this scroll was sectarian.
18. The first letter on ‘Works Reckoned as Righteous’ (4Q394–398), as interpreted by Eisenman and Wise (The Dead Sea Scrolls Uncovered), gives a detailed exposition on the Essene calendar and mentions the Passover, Festival of Weeks, Day of Atonement and Festival of Booths (Tabernacles), but not Purim.
Although conventionally associated with the Persian period of the fifth century BCE, Purim has recently been shown to have been based on a much older Assyrian myth dating back at least to the seventh century BCE. Dr Stephanie Dalley, Shikito Research Fellow in Assyriology at the Oriental Institute, Oxford University, at a lecture entitled ‘Esther and Purim: The Assyrian Background’ given on 24 February 1999, convincingly related the story of Esther and Mordecai to the Assyrian gods Ishtar and Marduk and the name ‘Purim’ to the Akkadian term for the casting of lots, amongst other commonalities. This attribution to a Mesopotamian rather than Persian source for the Festival of Purim further explains the Qumran-Essenes’ essential reluctance to incorporate an ‘alien’ festival into their calendar.
19. Cyril Aldred, Akhenaten King of Egypt (London: Thames & Hudson, 1988).
20. James Henry Breasted, Ancient Records of Egypt – Vol II (New York: Russell & Russell, 1906).
21. Sir Ernest Alfred Wallis Budge, The Book of the Dead (Avenel, N.J.: Gramercy Books, 1995); R.T. Rundle Clark, Myth and Symbol in Ancient Egypt (London: Thames & Hudson, 1978).
22. Budge, The Mummy: A Handbook of Egyptian Funerary Archaeology.
23. B. Z. Wacholder, The Dawn of Qumran (Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College, 1983); Dwight D. Swanson, ‘A Covenant Just Like Jacob’s – The Covenant of 11QT29 and Jeremiah’s New Covenant’, New Qumran Texts and Studies (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1994); Philip R. Davies, Behind the Essenes – History and Ideology in the Dead Sea Scrolls (Atlanta, Ga: Scholars Press, 1987).
24. P. R. Davies, Behind the Essenes – History and Ideology in the Dead Sea Scrolls.
25. Raymonde de Gans, Toutankhamon (Paris: Editions de L’Erable, 1968).
26. Fenton, Genizah Fragments.
27. P. R. Davies, Behind the Essenes – History and Ideology in the Dead Sea Scrolls.
28. Swanson, ‘A Covenant Just Like Jacob’s – The Covenant of 11QT29 and Jeremiah’s New Covenant’.
29. According to a report in the Jewish Chronicle of 22 January 1999, the Vatican has now acknowledged the validity of the Jewish Covenant with God.
30. Geza Vermes, The Complete
Dead Sea Scrolls in English – 1QS, 4QS265 (London: Allen Lane, 1997).
31. Lawrence H. Schiffman, ‘The Judean Scrolls and the History of Judaism’, The Dead Sea Scrolls – Fifty Years After Their Discovery: Proceedings of the Jerusalem Congress July 20–25, 1997 (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society in cooperation with The Shrine of the Book, Israel Museum, 2000).
32. Anthony Tyrrell Hanson, Jesus Christ in the Old Testament, SPCK, 1965.
33. This injunction might well be evidence that Tutankhamun was a Prince of the Royal line, but not the blood brother of Akhenaten.
34. Elsewhere animal sacrifice has continued and still takes place in certain parts of the world amongst particular religious communities. The Incas are even known to have practised child sacrifice up until 500 years ago. A small following of Samaritans still gather at Passover on Mount Gerizim, in Israel, to sacrifice a lamb and keep a midnight vigil. Certain Kali denominated Hindu Temples in, for example, Nepal and Madras still conduct ritual killings, for a monetary offering, of chickens and goats, which are thus made holy and then taken home by individual local congregants to be eaten.
35. N. de G. Davies, The Rock Tombs of El Amarna – Part II (London: The Egypt Exploration Fund, 1905).
36. Florentino Garcia Martinez, The Dead Sea Scrolls Translated (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1994).
37. Words in [ ] indicates partially preserved text. Words in ( ) are interpolations.
38. George J. Brooke, ‘Exegesis at Qumran – 4QFlorilegium in its Jewish Context’, Journal for the Study of the Old Testament, Supplement Series 29 (Sheffield: Dept of Biblical Studies, University of Sheffield, 1985).
CHAPTER 17 PHYSICAL, MATERIAL AND TECHNOLOGICAL LINKS BETWEEN QUMRAN AND AKHETATEN
1. Ian Shaw and Paul Nicholson, British Museum Dictionary of Ancient Egypt (London: Published for the Trustees of the British Museum by British Museum Press, c1995).
2. G. R. Driver, The Hebrew Scrolls from the Neighbourhood of Jericho and the Dead Sea, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1951).
3. Eugene Ulrich and Frank Moore Cross, Discoveries in the Judaean Desert, Vol.VII – Qumran Cave 4 (London: Clarendon Press, 1994).
The Mystery of the Copper Scroll of Qumran Page 44
