The First Discovery
This animal, which a young shepherd boy was looking for, led to the accidental discovery of the scrolls.
What is a goat? (or sheep)
The scrolls get their name from this famous body of water, which is the saltiest lake on Earth.
What is the Dead Sea?
This metal scroll acts like a real-life pirate map, listing 64 places where gold and silver were hidden.
What is the Copper Scroll?
The scrolls contain pages or fragments from every single book of the Hebrew Bible except for this one narrative book about a Persian queen.
What is the Book of Esther?
Most historians believe this quiet, strict Jewish group wrote or collected the scrolls while living away from big cities.
Who are the Essenes?
This is the year the first scrolls were found by accident in the desert.
What is 1947?
This is the name of the ancient stone ruins located right next to the plateau where the caves are.
What is Qumran?
Most of the scrolls were written on this material, which is made from smoothed-out animal skins.
What is parchment (or leather)?
This incredibly long and beautifully preserved scroll contains all 66 chapters of a major biblical prophet.
What is the Great Isaiah Scroll?
The people at Qumran hid their precious library in caves to protect them from the invading soldiers of this massive European empire.
What is the Roman Empire?
The shepherd boy knew he found something strange when he threw a rock into a cave and heard this specific object smash.
What is a clay jar or pottery pot?
To get to the caves today, you would have to travel to this desert region in the Middle East.
What is the Judean Desert?
Some scrolls were written on this ancient paper-like material made from water reeds.
What is papyrus?
This scroll acts like a "school handbook" or rulebook, explaining the strict daily laws for the people living in the desert community.
What is the Community Rule?
To keep the scrolls safe from moisture, dust, and animals for thousands of years, the writers sealed them inside these objects.
What are clay jars or storage pots?
This is the total number of distinct caves near Qumran where scroll fragments were eventually found.
What is 11?
The Dead Sea is famous because its extreme saltiness allows swimmers to do this effortlessly without sinking.
What is float?
This is the main, everyday language that most of the scrolls were written in.
What is Hebrew?
Because the scrolls are over 2,000 years old, archaeologists didn't find neat books; they mostly found thousands of tiny, ripped-up pieces called this.
What are fragments?
This is the general title given to the trained professionals whose actual job was to hand-copy holy texts perfectly line-by-line.
Who are scribes?
This is the cultural group name of the nomadic desert shepherds who made the historic first find.
Who are the Bedouins?
Qumran and its caves are located near the northwest coast of the Dead Sea, about 20 miles east of this famous, ancient holy city.
What is Jerusalem?
Scientists use this modern laboratory test, which measures old carbon atoms, to prove exactly how ancient the scroll materials are.
What is Carbon-14 dating or Radiocarbon dating)?
Besides Hebrew and Aramaic, a few scroll fragments were written in this language, which was brought to the region by rulers like Alexander the Great.
What is Greek?
The people who lived at Qumran practiced this lifestyle, meaning they gave up personal wealth to share everything as a group.
What is communal living or an ascetic lifestyle?