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Mystery of Dead Sea Scroll unravels
news.independent.co.uk ^ | 03 April 2002 | Claudia Joseph

Posted on 04/03/2002 9:55:46 AM PST by It'salmosttolate

Mystery of Dead Sea Scroll unravels

By Claudia Joseph

03 April 2002 19:23

It is a mystery that has baffled religious scholars for 50 years. Now the secret of the Copper Scroll, one of the Dead Sea Scrolls, may finally be unravelled.

Robert Feather, a member of the Institute of Metallurgists, will claim in a television documentary tonight that he has cracked the secret code of the Copper Scroll

Mr Feather rejects current thinking that the copper document was written by the Essenes monastic sect 2,000 years ago. A member of the Jewish Historical Society, and the Egypt Exploration Society, Mr Feather believes the engraved scroll, which lists treasures buried in the Holy Land, is written in Egyptian not in Hebrew.

He suggests it can be traced back to the monotheistic court of the Egyptian pharaoh Akhenaten and Queen Nefertiti in Amarna 600 miles south of the Dead Sea and halfway down the Nile between Cairo and Luxor. He is lobbying the Egyptian antiquities department for permission to excavate the site.

The location of the treasures themselves has baffled scholars. Mr Feather makes a convincing argument for his theories in tonight's BBC2 programme, The Pharaoh's Holy Treasure, but his claims are hotly contested by other academics.

"If the numbering system is Egyptian and the weights system makes sense using Egyptian weights, then why not look to Egypt? It's the logical thing to do. Virtually every major character in the Old Testament spent huge amounts of time in Egypt ­ born there, lived there, or influenced by Egypt. It's an undeniable fact of the Jewish religion that Egypt was a powerful force throughout its early history," said Mr Feather.

The Copper Scroll was discovered, in March 1952, by a team of Jordanian and French archaeologists. It was broken into twochunks and hidden in a cave in Qumran, Israel. Later, scientists, finding it too brittle to unroll, sliced it into 23 segments. The scroll was 30cm wide and, in total, 21/2m long.

Historians deduced that the text, engraved down 12 columns and listing 64 caches of treasure from gold bars to silver ingots, was written in Hebrew, but they were mystified by the figures of 25 tonnes of gold and 65 tonnes of silver ­ more than the entire amount mined worldwide at the time of the engraving.

Mr Feather, who is married with two children and lives in north London, believes he has found new clues in the text. One is the inverted "u" for the number 10, which indicates that the engraving was Egyptian and that the measure was the 10.2gm Egyptian kite rather than the 35kgm Hebrew kikha, making the total treasure a much more credible 7.5kg of gold and 19.2kg of silver.

He has also discovered that the 14 Greek letters spell the name Akhenaten the Pharaoh, who was crowned Ahmenotep the fourth but changed his name to mean "servant of the sun disc" after decreeing there was only one God Aten.

"The back of my neck was tingling. It was just one of those moments of incredible excitement because no one had ever before cracked this Greek cryptic puzzle," said Mr Feather, who backs his theory by interpreting the scroll's words "Great River"not as the River Jordan but as the River Nile. He has also weighed the gold bars found at the part of the archaeological site known as Crock of Gold Square, and the treasures discovered in Queen Nefertiti's tomb, and believes they match the spoils identified in the Copper Scroll.


TOPICS: General Discusssion
KEYWORDS: 18thdynasty; akhenaten; amarna; copperscroll; deadseascrolls; egypt; epigraphyandlanguage; godsgravesglyphs; israel; letshavejerusalem; nefertiti
Under "topics" there is only one choice -- General.

Are we being discriminated against?

1 posted on 04/03/2002 9:55:46 AM PST by It'salmosttolate
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To: It'salmosttolate
I wonder why, in an article like this, the author would mention that Mr. Feather is married, has two kids and lives in North London. Does this make Mr. Feather any less [or more] credible?

Thanks for the post anyway. Please give me a bump if you get anything more on this matter.

2 posted on 04/04/2002 10:29:34 AM PST by curmudgeonII
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To: It'salmosttolate
Fascinating theory, and something may come of it. The Egyptian influence on the Hebrew scriptures appears to be upheld by the some of the inscriptions at Arknenton's (sp?) city.
3 posted on 04/06/2002 4:46:07 PM PST by BlackVeil
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To: StayAt HomeMother; Ernest_at_the_Beach; decimon; 1010RD; 21twelve; 24Karet; 2ndDivisionVet; ...
Note: this topic is from 4/03/2002. Thanks It'salmosttolate.

4 posted on 08/12/2015 10:49:49 AM PDT by SunkenCiv (What do we want? REGIME CHANGE! When do we want it? NOW)
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To: It'salmosttolate; BlackVeil; SunkenCiv; All

A friend of mine was very interested in the idea that the bible’s numbers had a lot of secret code meanings in them. Anyone ever heard of this theory?


5 posted on 08/12/2015 4:26:53 PM PDT by gleeaikin
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To: gleeaikin

There is an entire discipline of Jewish mysticism known as Gematria that is devoted to finding hidden meanings in the numerical values of words. For example, the number 18 is very significant, because it is the numerical value of the word Chai, meaning life or living. Donations to Jewish charities are routinely made in denominations of 18 for that reason.

http://www.jewfaq.org/alephbet.htm


6 posted on 08/12/2015 4:28:57 PM PDT by nascarnation (Impeach, convict, deport)
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To: It'salmosttolate

.
>> “Are we being discriminated against? “ <<

I believe that it is intended to squelch any real debate on this forum. You just got trapped by accident.


7 posted on 08/12/2015 4:54:28 PM PDT by editor-surveyor (Freepers: Not as smart as I'd hoped they'd be)
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To: gleeaikin

The meanings of the numbers of the Bible are in no way secret.

The secret stuff is add-ins by unbelievers that are not satisfied with the real word of God. The secret babble all leads away from God and his message.
.


8 posted on 08/12/2015 5:01:00 PM PDT by editor-surveyor (Freepers: Not as smart as I'd hoped they'd be)
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To: gleeaikin

“The Bible Code” or “Torah Code”?


9 posted on 08/12/2015 8:49:57 PM PDT by SunkenCiv (What do we want? REGIME CHANGE! When do we want it? NOW)
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[snip] “The back of my neck was tingling. It was just one of those moments of incredible excitement because no one had ever before cracked this Greek cryptic puzzle,” said Mr Feather, who backs his theory by interpreting the scroll’s words “Great River”not as the River Jordan but as the River Nile. He has also weighed the gold bars found at the part of the archaeological site known as Crock of Gold Square, and the treasures discovered in Queen Nefertiti’s tomb, and believes they match the spoils identified in the Copper Scroll. [/snip]

That’s interesting — there *is* no tomb of Nefertiti so far as is known (the discovery of some probable unopened chambers in Tut’s tomb is more recent than 2002], and it appears that there *is* no archaeological site known as Crock of Gold Square.


10 posted on 08/12/2015 8:55:41 PM PDT by SunkenCiv (What do we want? REGIME CHANGE! When do we want it? NOW)
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To: editor-surveyor
Concept an agenda then make it fit. I tune out the number freaks on CtC due to
their ability to make any number mean anything they wish. Usually
some made up globull man caused warming agenda.
11 posted on 08/12/2015 8:56:32 PM PDT by MaxMax
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The Chinese connection
New discoveries from Asia suggest the Dead Sea Scrolls may not be as old as we think
http://orion.mscc.huji.ac.il/orion/news/scrollNov4-06.htm


12 posted on 08/12/2015 8:59:32 PM PDT by SunkenCiv (What do we want? REGIME CHANGE! When do we want it? NOW)
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To: SunkenCiv; All

My friend was referring to code by Hebrews, so I presume he meant the Torah if that means the Old Testament. Given their treatment by the Roman’s, some form of coding would not be an impossibility.


13 posted on 08/12/2015 9:03:40 PM PDT by gleeaikin
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To: SunkenCiv

The author of that scam is not exactly gifted in logic.

Much of the Qumran material has been radio dated to 200 BC.

There is no reason to believe that material from Qumran couldn’t have been carried to China, or even that the same sects didn’t occupy both sites.


14 posted on 08/12/2015 9:18:25 PM PDT by editor-surveyor (Freepers: Not as smart as I'd hoped they'd be)
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To: gleeaikin

Equidistant letter sequence messages embedded in Torah prove that it has not been modified at any time.


15 posted on 08/12/2015 9:20:58 PM PDT by editor-surveyor (Freepers: Not as smart as I'd hoped they'd be)
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To: editor-surveyor

I wholeheartedly agree — it’s not Egyptian, and Chinese characters on the material is, at best, unlikely, and if it were there, complicated to explain to say the least.


16 posted on 08/13/2015 1:48:49 AM PDT by SunkenCiv (What do we want? REGIME CHANGE! When do we want it? NOW)
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To: curmudgeonII

I, also, found that detail puzzling.


17 posted on 08/13/2015 9:01:21 AM PDT by Bigg Red (Let's put the ship of state on Cruz Control with Ted Cruz.)
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