The Media Line: Can AI and Modern Science Help Unlock Some of the Ancient Mysteries of Qumran?  

Can AI and Modern Science Help Unlock Some of the Ancient Mysteries of Qumran?  

Professor Mladen Popović told TML the manuscripts offer “an extraordinary window into the intellectual world of ancient Judea.” The project combines advanced laboratory analysis, the study of ancient handwriting, and AI technology 

By Maayan Hoffman / The Media Line  

Two new research projects using state-of-the-art technology could help solve long-standing mysteries surrounding discoveries at Qumran, including where the Dead Sea Scrolls were produced and whether a pile of red dust discovered there in 1992 could be the remains of incense burned in the Temple.  

The Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) announced in June that the European Research Council had awarded a five-year grant of €2.5 million to investigate where the Dead Sea Scrolls were produced and copied, and what their origins reveal about centers of learning, scribal culture, and the transmission of knowledge in ancient Judea.  

The grant was awarded to Professor Mladen Popović of the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, who will work with the IAA and leading laboratories and research institutions across Europe. The team of historians, archaeologists, material scientists, chemists, and artificial intelligence specialists will use chemical analysis, artificial intelligence, paleography, and codicology to reconstruct the geographical and cultural contexts in which the scrolls were produced.  

Some 250 samples will be examined, including parchment, papyrus, and ink. For the first time, papyri from Egypt will be examined alongside papyri from Qumran and other Judean Desert sites, allowing researchers to compare their chemical signatures directly. The team aims to analyze chemical data using AI tools to identify complex patterns that archaeologists and scientists might not detect on their own. Dr. Ilit Cohen-Ofri of the IAA told The Media Line that at least six people will work on the project, including researchers from Sweden, Italy, and the Netherlands.  

“This is the largest research project to date to use artificial intelligence to investigate the cultural context of the Dead Sea Scrolls,” said Popović. 

He said the manuscripts offer “an extraordinary window into the intellectual world of ancient Judea.” The project combines advanced laboratory analysis, the study of ancient handwriting, and recent advances in artificial intelligence. 

“We are now able to address questions that were previously beyond our reach: who copied these manuscripts, where they were produced, how knowledge circulated, and the role these texts played within the society of their time,” Popović said. 

The Dead Sea Scrolls were first discovered by Bedouin shepherds in caves near Qumran and the Dead Sea in 1946 or early 1947, before the State of Israel was founded. The collection includes some of the earliest known manuscripts of many books of the Bible and is considered one of the 20th century’s most significant archaeological discoveries, the IAA wrote in its announcement of the grant. Yet despite decades of research, the precise locations where many of the scrolls were manufactured, prepared, and copied remain unknown.  

“Where were the scrolls written?” Cohen-Ofri asked. “They were found around the caves from the Second Temple period, but the question is, were they written at Qumran themselves or were they brought from other locations?”  

She said that many researchers envisioned what took place at Qumran as similar to a medieval monastery, where monks sat and copied the Bible and other texts. However, researchers have not found enough evidence to support that theory. They did find one or two inkwells, but not as many as one might expect. Some experts believe some of the scrolls were written at Qumran, while others were brought from elsewhere, such as Jerusalem.  

“Think of people who might have fled from the Romans, and they fled from Jerusalem to the caves, and they took their precious possessions, including the scrolls, with them,” Cohen-Ofri suggested.  

A separate initiative is revisiting another unresolved Qumran claim: whether a reddish-brown substance unearthed in a sealed cave more than 30 years ago could be remnants of the sacred Temple incense, known as ketoret in Hebrew, which was burned twice daily in Jerusalem.  

In July, the Jerusalem nonprofit Project Qumran released a free digital publication examining how the dust was discovered and recent efforts to use modern scientific testing on the few remaining samples to determine whether they are what researchers believe them to be. The publication, The Ketoret: A Source-Based Historical Account of the Qumran Incense Discovery, was written by Israel365 journalist Eliyahu Berkowitz under the research and editorial direction of M. Rhonda Attar.  

Attar explained to The Media Line that researchers plan to conduct radiocarbon dating, elemental analysis, organic carbon testing, and phytochemical studies before comparing the results with ancient descriptions of the Temple incense. They hope to determine not only whether the substance could be the incense but, if so, what the exact recipe of the Temple spices may have been.  

The writers and researchers are clear that although preliminary studies of the dust provided several indications that it could be the incense, those findings were not conclusive.  

The story of the incense discovery began when researcher and excavation leader Vendyl Jones led excavations at a cave south of the ancient Qumran settlement near the Dead Sea. He spent decades searching for Temple treasures described in what is known as the Copper Scroll. This scroll lists dozens of locations where Temple gold, silver, and other sacred objects or substances could purportedly be found.  

During one of those excavations, Jones found a sealed recess beneath a flat stone containing what is believed to have been hundreds of kilograms of reddish-brown organic material.  

“The material was intensely fragrant,” Berkowitz wrote in an article published on the Israel365 website. “Volunteers who handled it reported that the scent permeated their clothing for days.”  

The material was packed and removed from the site. However, before formally reporting the discovery to the relevant Israeli antiquities authorities, Jones held a press conference to share the news, and several major international outlets reported on it. The excavation was subsequently halted, and the dust was transferred to private custody, where it remained for decades.  

“It never went through the complete testing, so we have not been able to say 100% what the substance was,” Attar told The Media Line. “The dust got caught in this fragile chain of custody because it never found an institutional home or oversight.”  

At the time, two scientists did test the material. Rabbi Dr. Marvin Antelman, a chemist affiliated with the Weizmann Institute, performed a preliminary chemical analysis in 1992 using spectrometry and atomic analysis to identify the organic constituents of the powder. He reported identifying eight of the 11 principal ketoret ingredients specified in the Talmud, including charkom (saffron), kinamon (cinnamon), kosht (costus), levonah (frankincense), and mor (myrrh).   

Another scientist, Dr. Terry Hutter of Kansas, an expert in ancient plants, pollen, and microscopic botanical remains, also examined dust he had received from Jones. His report identified plant fragments under microscopy that he said corresponded to at least nine of the 11 ketoret ingredients, each traceable to the appropriate botanical families and consistent with Second Temple-period material.  

According to Project Qumran, much of the original cache later disappeared. After the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack, what are believed to be remnants of the cache were found in a Mason jar kept in a bomb shelter in the West Bank. Project Qumran has now assembled those remnants along with others donated by Anita Shay Jones, Vendyl Jones’s widow, who asked that the material be returned to Israel. The samples will now undergo further evaluation. 

The recipe for the incense has been lost since the Second Temple was destroyed in 70 CE.  

Attar told The Media Line that determining whether the substance is the ketoret could shed further light on what took place at Qumran and potentially help researchers identify the ingredients of the ancient incense through reverse engineering.  

“Science has come a long way,” Attar said. “We should really be able to figure out what this dust is once and for all.”  

 

Captions: Qumran. (Shai Halevi, Israel Antiquities Authority)

 

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