Cmentarzysko qumrańskie w nowym świetle? Pogląd na aktualny stan badań

Abstract

To sum up, my proposals presented at the New York congress on Khirbet Qumran in 1992 have been fulfilled for the most part. 1. We have two plans of the cemetery, but they differ in the number of tombs. 2. The lost anthropological skeletal material was found, but identifications of the deceased still differ. 3. DNA tests of bones have started. 4. Notes from R. de Vaux’s excavations diary were read by R. Donceel and finally published in an improved English version by S. Pfann. 5. Some more tombs (including a rare one, the Zinc Tomb) have been dug up. We are still on the threshold of a consensus concerning the Qumran cemetery. It seems that only opening a large part of the area with some hundred of tombs in regular excavations would help us to explain if it was really a sectarian cemetery or an ordinary contemporary, Second Temple poor cemetery with shaft tombs. Given what we know about such tombs in the Judaean Desert, Nabatea, Jericho and Jerusalem, the Qumran cemetery looks no more exceptional than does the Khirbet Qumran site itself. We are so very interested in the site and the cemetery only because of the incidental discovery of numerous manuscripts in their vicinity.