A Dead Sea Scroll Jar at the Oriental Institute

Abstract

The Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago has recently acquired by purchase from the Jordan Government, through the cooperation of Mr. G. Lankester Harding of the Jordan Department of Antiquities, one of the jars from the Scroll Cave near 'Ain Feshkha.' The jar, complete with cover, had been assembled from over one hundred fragments at the Palestine Archaeological Muiseum under the supervision of Mr. Harding and Pare R. de Vaux (O. P.) of the ecole Biblique, and was dispatched to the United States by air freight in October, 1950, with the courteous assistance of Fr. Roland Murphy (O. Carm.), then Fellow at the American School at Jerusalem. It was lost in transit, located with the assistance of Prof. A. H. Detweiler of Cornell University in the course of a visit to the Jerusalem School in January 1951 and arrived at Chicago a month later in its original packing but sadly in need of repair because not a few of the joins had come apart in shipment. Reassembled by the Institute's preparator, Mr. Robert Hanson, the jar itself (not counting the lid) has a height of 71.7 cm., a maximum diameter of 4.7 cm. and a maximum circumference of roughly 79 cm. Its large tubular body is set upon a low base only 13.1 cm. in diameter and slightly concave in shape, and is constricted at the top by a flat shoulder that ends in an abbreviated neck with an opening 16.5 cm. across. The diameter of the mouth thus exceeds that of the base and for reasons that should be obvious. Though an element of unevenness in the surface of the shoulder precludes a tight fit, there can be no doubt that the accompanying bowl-shaped lid was of a type intended to cover the mouth of jars of this kind, matching the jar in ware, fitting nicely over the neck and reproducing in inverted form and on a smaller diarmeter the base and the first few centimeters of the body of the jar itself. The lid arbitrarily assigned to the Chicago jar has a height of 6.4 cm. and a diameter of 18.7 cm. Its circumference is 59 cm. At the top it ends in what is really an inverted base 7.5 cm. across, the transition from base to bowl-shaped body being made by a shallow trough exactly fitting the finger-tips of a hand taking hold of it. The ware is well-levigated reddish clay covered with a slip that has flaked off in many areas; it is now of a dirty creamy color and may originally have been somewhat darker. The color of the ware itself is fresh and clearly visible along the edges of the fragments, both those still in place as assembled at Jerusalem and those reset at Chicago, showing that the jar had been smashed only recently arid not in antiquity, perhaps when the illicit search for additional manuscripts was conducted in the Cave shortly before its excavation. The body of the jar reflects in the unevenness of its surface the method of its construction, a suc-