Copper Scroll

In 1952, archaeologists excavating the cliffs above the Dead Sea made a discovery unlike anything found before or since: two oxidized copper rolls pressed against the back wall of a cave. While the other Dead Sea Scrolls were written on papyrus and leather, this one was inscribed on metal. While the others contained religious texts and biblical manuscripts, this one contained something altogether different: a list.

Sixty-four entries. Sixty-four hiding places. And at each location, a quantity of gold, silver, or sacred objects so vast that the total-by the most conservative scholarly estimate-exceeds three hundred tons of precious metal.

The Copper Scroll (officially 3Q15) is the most mysterious document in the most significant manuscript discovery of the modern era. It has been translated four times by major scholars. It has generated thousands of pages of academic commentary. And its sixty-four hiding places are, with perhaps a handful of partial exceptions, as unknown today as they were when the text was first revealed in a Manchester workshop in 1956.

This book tells the complete story: the desert community that may have hidden the treasure, the scholars who fought over the scroll, the question of whether the treasure is real or legendary, and the searchers-from a BBC broadcaster to an Oklahoma arson investigator-who have spent their lives trying to find what it describes.

Along the way, it examines all sixty-four locations, entry by entry, against the best current archaeological and geographical knowledge. It presents the full scholarly debate without reaching a conclusion the evidence does not support. And it asks the question every reader will be asking: if three hundred tons of ancient treasure are buried somewhere in the Judean desert, why hasn't anyone found it yet?

The answer is more complicated-and more fascinating-than you might expect.