New Photographs of the Qumran Excavations from 1954 and Interpretations of L.77 and L.86

Abstract

Newly discovered photographs taken during the Qumran excavations in 1954, now available on the Palestine Exploration Fund website, can illuminate various problematic issues of the site's history. In this article aspects of Qumran are examined afresh with the aid of the data these photographs provide. The mud-brick, plastered 'blocks' of L.77 and L.86-L.87/L.89 have been interpreted in diverse ways by different Qumran researchers, but it is most likely that these features had different functions within each separate spatial context, since those of L.77 are much lower than those of L.86 and L.89. In a new photograph, the top of the central block in L.86 appears to have had a slight hollow. The blocks are not the bases for palm-log roof supports, since the fall of the burnt wood on the Period Ib floor in L.86 — now evidenced in a new photograph — indicates that the flat roofs at Qumran were constructed with beams running across the widths of rooms, with palm logs laid on top.