The institute played a significant role in the discovery and preservation of the
Dead Sea Scrolls. The scrolls contain approximately eight hundred separate works written between the 2nd century BCE and the 1st century CE. They include the only Jewish Bible manuscripts from that period, including a manuscript of Exodus that dates to c. 250 BCE. Manuscripts or fragments of every book in the Hebrew Bible except the
Book of Esther were unearthed, as well as many other Jewish religious texts, many previously unknown. Most scholars believe that the Dead Sea Scrolls were the property of the
Essenes who lived at the site of Khirbet Qumran. The Essenes were a Jewish sect active in the last century BCE and the first century CE, at the same time as the
Pharisees and the
Sadducees. In the spring of 1948, the institute was contacted by a representative of
Mar Samuel, the metropolitan (archbishop) of the Syrian Orthodox Church in Jerusalem, who wanted to authenticate four ancient scrolls that he had recently purchased from an antiquities dealer. One of the younger scholars in residence at the institute at that time,
John C. Trever, recognized the antiquity of the manuscripts and photographed three of the four scrolls in the basement of the Albright under very adverse conditions. Trever was the first to photograph 1QIsaiah(a), a complete scroll of the book of Isaiah dating to approximately 100 BCE. Trever sent copies of his photographs to his mentor—famed Near Eastern scholar and former institute director
William F. Albright, who sent him a telegram congratulating him on the "greatest manuscript discovery of modern times!” In early September 1948, Mar Samuel contacted ASO—currently the Albright Institute—in Jerusalem and the then director Professor
Ovid R. Sellers. Samuel showed Sellers some additional scroll fragments that he had acquired. Sellers then focused on finding the cave in which the scrolls had been found. In late 1948, nearly two years after the discovery of the scrolls, scholars had yet to locate the cave where the fragments had been found. Conducting such a search was dangerous. When the British mandate in Palestine ended on May 15, 1948, war broke out immediately, and peace would not be restored until November. The cave was finally discovered on January 28, 1949, by a UN observer, and Sellers brought his box brownie camera to take the first photos of the cave, which were soon published in
Life magazine. In 1952,
Roland de Vaux, the head of the French Biblical School in Jerusalem, organized a search of the caves in the cliffs above the Dead Sea near the site of
Qumran. ASOR joined this expedition, and discovered Cave 3, the cave in which the famous
Copper Scroll was found. Cave 3 was the only Qumran cave to be completely excavated by professional archaeologists. The Albright Institute continues to play a role in scrolls scholarship to the present day. In the 1990s, Board Chair Joy Ungerleider established a Dorot Dead Sea Scrolls fellowship at the Albright to enable young American scholars to work on the scroll fragments in the nearby
Rockefeller Museum. One of the first holders of this fellowship was Sidnie White Crawford, board chair and former president of the institute, who lived and worked at the Albright from 1989 to 1991 on the editions of several Deuteronomy manuscripts from Cave 4, and the Reworked Pentateuch manuscripts, also from Cave 4. The Albright has hosted many scrolls scholars while they pursued their research, including Eugene C. Ulrich (University of Notre Dame), Mark Smith (New York University), and Eileen Schuller (McMaster University). In addition, former fellow and trustee
Jodi Magness (University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill) has produced the seminal work on Qumran archaeology in the twenty-first century. The Albright's excavations at Tel Miqne
Ekron was a joint project with the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and was excavated from 1981 until 1996 under the direction of the Albright's Dorot Director and Professor of Archaeology, Seymour Gitin, and Professor Trude Dothan of the Hebrew University. The excavations discovered the Philistine dedicatory inscription known as the
Ekron Royal Dedicatory Inscription. ==Fellowships==