Archeologia Khirbet Qumrân w Paryżu

Abstract

The paper concerns the archaeological collections of three research institutions dispatched in Paris, the Louvre Museum and the Museum of the Bible and the Holy Land, and also in the collection of the National Library of France, where we can admire the archeological objects and fragments of the manuscripts discovered by the international Dead Sea Scrolls Team at Khirbet Qumrân. One of the archaeological treasures of the collections of the Near East Antiquities Department of the Louvre Museum are three artifacts discovered during the famous excavations at Khirbet Qumrân: the cylindrical “scrolls jar”, used to store biblical scrolls (jarre à manuscrits) and a small fragment of linen, in which the Bible manuscripts were wrapped, here also completed by the faithful copies (facsimiles) of the only one manuscript written on the copper plate, the so-called Copper Scroll (3Q15). The Copper Scroll’s long term conservation against of its strong corrosion held in 1993 – 1997 at the Paris Valectra Laboratory of French Electricity was completed by the restitution of its copies by a brand new technology as X-ray and 3D restitution treatments following by the final facsimiles reproduction in modern Copper. With the turn of the Museum of the Bible and the Holy Land by the Catholic Institute in Paris, it has its own two Dead Sea artifacts of bible archaeology: the cylindrical “scrolls jar” (jarres à manuscrits) and a small fragment of the Psalm manuscript from the Ist century B.C.E. probably coming from Nahal Hever or Qumrân 4Q Cave. These Artifacts of archeology in Paris are completed by the unique collection of 377 small fragments of Hebrew Bible manuscripts, discovered by Polish scholar J.T. Milik in the first Qumrân 1Q Cave in February and March 1949, which the National Library of France purchased in 1952. The fact that many French biblical scholars and archaeologists of the École Biblique in Jerusalem have initiated the first scientific exploration of the settlement and the caves at Khirbet Qumrân in mid-February 1949 it deals a huge contribution of French archeology in the discoveries and publications of the Dead Sea Scrolls.