What’s inside? Sealed jar discovered at Qumran -- site of Dead Sea Scrolls

Unreported Heritage News ^ | Friday, December 10, 2010 | Owen Jarus

[SunkenCiv]

An intact, sealed, jar has been discovered at Qumran, the site where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found in nearby caves.

A multinational team of scientists have been analyzing the jar and their findings are set to be published in the journal Archaeometry. If you have a subscription (or access to a library with one) you can already see the article on the publication's website...

Altogether nine scientists are credited in the paper. Kaare Lund Rasmussen, of the University of Southern Denmark, is listed at the lead author.

The jar itself was excavated in 2004. It was found about 50 meters south of Qumran in an uninhabited area that may have been used for agriculture. Animal bones and pottery shards were unearthed nearby. The group that found it was led by Randall Price of Liberty University and Oren Gutfeld of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem...

"The intact jar, named Jar-35, was sealed with an overturned bowl fastened as a lid," Rasmussen's team writes. "When the lid was lifted and a camera lowered into the interior, a deposit up to 3 cm thick was discovered lining the bottom and the sides."

...One of the techniques uses x-rays to search for crystalline material -- the test succeeded in identifying a substance. "Based on this analysis, it is evident that the only significant crystalline phase in the deposit is gypsum," the scientists write.

Also found in the jar was a small amount of charcoal. They were able to radiocarbon date it, determining that the coal was used sometime between 100 BC and AD 15, a period when Qumran would have been inhabited.

[SunkenCiv]

Qumran was occupied between 100 BC-AD 70. The sealed pot was found 50 meters south of it. [Photo by James Emery, CC Attribution 2.0 Generic]

[Logic n' Reason]

Fascinating....absolutely fascinating!

[Waverunner]

Don’t open it.....
Every Omen movie says it’s a bad idea

[SunkenCiv]

· GGG managers are SunkenCiv, StayAt HomeMother, and Ernest_at_the_Beach · · join list or digest · view topics · view or post blog · bookmark · post a topic · subscribe ·
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[Logic n' Reason]

LoL!!!!!!

[doc1019]

LOL!

[brytlea]

hey should wait til Dec. 21, 2012.

[JoeProBono]

[Rembrandt]

It’s the Democrat Genie inside.

I HAVE THREE WISHES. YOU WILL GRANT THEM TO ME!

[wolfman23601]

My guess is dentures.

[FReepaholic]

...What's inside? Sealed jar discovered at Qumran -- site of Dead Sea Scrolls...

Carnac's envelopes?

[rdl6989]

Now how did that get in there?

[wildbill]

Have Geraldo host the opening ceremony on TV.

You could call it “Pot Luck”

[HighlyOpinionated]

[Tainan]

The lunch remains of a worker named Thermos.

[Kevmo]

I’m crossing my fingers and hoping it will be a section of one of the 4 Gospels.

[BlueDragon]

Gypsum? I have no clue as to what it was used for in those times.

... the above statement is pure "fishing expedition", in the hopes some know-it-all (I'd settle for a know-more-than-I-do) while come along and enlighten us...

[spokeshave]

obambi’s long form BC

[Straight Vermonter]

The scientists raise a few other possibilities – one is that Qumran’s residents waterproofed this particular jar by lining it with gypsum. It then could have been used to store water or another type of liquid. “Against this hypothesis is the fact that there have been no previous reports of gypsum lining of such jars,” the team writes.

I'm no expert but I'm pretty sure gypsum is water soluble so it wouldn't make a very good waterproofing substance.