One of the last Dead Sea Scroll discoveries, the Copper Scroll was uncovered in Cave 3 at Qumran in 1952. The scroll was found in two rolls, with broken rivet holes showing where the sections had once been joined.
Because the copper had completely oxidized, unrolling the two scroll pieces was impossible. It took three years before a process was discovered to cut the brittle copper document. A professor of mechanical engineering at the College of Technology in Manchester, England, Dr. H. Wright Baker, sliced it into thin strips using a jury-rigged machine that cut with such precision that a single character could be cut in half if necessary and still be legible.The first scholar to translate the scroll was John M. Allegro, who wrote in his 1961 book, "The Treasure of the Copper Scroll," that "the language was certainly Hebrew, though strangely spelled and written." Allegro and the son of the director of antiquities of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, Muhanna Durra, made facsimile reproductions of each section.
The scroll is a register of buried treasure in 64 deposits from Hebron to Mount Gerizim to Qumran. The objects described in the scroll include "a silver chest, ingots of gold and silver, jars, bowls, perfume and even vestaments," wrote the late Theodor H. Gaster in his book, "The Dead Sea Scriptures." He said that according to Old Testament standards, the precious metals buried amount to a hefty 138 tons.
Gaster concluded his remarks on the Copper Scroll with this rather dismaying statement: "Two transcripts of the Copper Scroll have thus far been published, by J.T. Milik and John Allegro respectively. But they differ so radically in almost every line that we must simply await photographs before any translation can be safely attempted."
Vendyl Jones says that both previous translations of the scroll are incorrect because there are over 80 mistakes in transcription of the Hebrew characters from the scroll. Professor Bruce Zuckerman of the Center for Ancient Biblical Manuscripts at the University of Southern California recently made photographic plates of the rapidly disintegrating Copper Scroll in Amman, Jordan. Jones' wife, Zahava Cohen Jones, met with Zuckerman in California in January to clear up the two-page list of words she could not identify in her translation of the scroll.
While dismissing the Hebrew skills of Allegro, Jones says the reason the highly qualified scholar J.T. Milik erred in his translation is because he was not versed in non-biblical Jewish writing such as the Zohar, Talmud, Midrash and Mishnah. "We find in the Copper Scroll a Mishnaic form of Hebrew that does not occur elsewhere until the Talmudic Period, 200, 300 years later," Jones said.
- What do experts say about ancient documents and archaeology?
- Amos Kloner, an archaeology professor at Bar-Ilan University in Israel, told the Jerusalem Post on May 23 that Jones was wasting his time. "I'm sure the temple treasures were destroyed," he said. Kloner also said that the Copper Scroll has proven to be an unreliable guide.
- Archaeologist Wilfred Griggs, of the ancient studies department at Brigham Young University, who has excavated in Egypt for 12 years and is widely known for bringing the Ramses exhibit to BYU, disagrees. Griggs said of Jones' excavation, "I will not be surprised at all . . . that someone was able to use a written text to find an artifact. Time and time again we have watched the scholarly world eat crow because the ancients were not supposed to be factual. On the other hand, one cannot very successfully predict what's going to be found. But I had a professor at Stanford who said that behind every legend is some kernel of truth."
- William Moffett is director of the Huntington Library in San Marino, Calif., and the man responsible for the release of the Dead Sea Scrolls photographs to interested scholars. When contacted by the Deseret News about Vendyl Jones' search using the Copper Scroll as a guide, Moffett said, "Of course, I'm not an archaeologist, but I do have some opinions. I'm personally fascinated with the idea of someone using the Copper Scroll to discover artifacts."
While Moffett expressed skepticism about Jones' archaeological qualifications, he said, "Sixteenth-century documents were used to pinpoint the wrecks of Spanish treasure galleons discovered off the coast of Peru, and an ancient text of Pliny was used along with NASA space imagery to pinpoint the ancient city of Ubar [on the southern Arabian PeninsulaT. This shows the importance of maintaining ancient records and making them available," he said.