Other Archaeological Sites / The Neolithic of the Levant (500 Page Book Online) McDonald Ancient Near East Book Auction Ad Infinitum The Dead Sea Region Salt lake of Jordan, Palestine and Israel which is the lowest water surface on earth at minus 395 metres compared to the level of the Mediterranean Sea. The Dead Sea is geologically part of the Rift Valley system. The principal source of the Dead Sea is the Jordan River but there are other streams feeding it too. There is no outlet for the lake and evaporation leads to the high content of salt as it is about 6 times more salty than the ocean water. There is no life in the lake. Near the Dead Sea lies Qumran where the Dead Sea scrolls were found and the important Israeli national monument of Masada ..... An Exhibit at the Library of Congress in Washington DC In 1947 young Bedouin shepherds searching for a stray goat in the Judean Desert entered a long untouched cave and found jars filled with ancient scrolls. That initial discovery by the Bedouins yielded seven scrolls and began a search that lasted nearly a decade and eventually produced thousands of scroll fragments from eleven caves. During those same years archaeologists searching for a habitation close to the caves that might help identify the people who deposited the scrolls, excavated the Qumran ruin, a complex of structures located on a barren terrace between the cliffs where the caves are found and the Dead Sea. Within a fairly short time after their discovery historical, paleographic, and linguistic evidence as well as carbon-14 dating established that the scrolls and the Qumran ruin dated from the third century BC to 68 AD. They were indeed ancient! Coming from the late Second Temple Period, a time when Jesus of Nazareth lived, they are older than any other surviving biblical manuscripts by almost one thousand years ......
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