Dead Sea Scrolls Timeline

John Trever photographed three of the scrolls discovered in Cave 1 on 21 February 1948, both on black-and-white and color film, creating an important early visual record of the manuscripts.

In 1952 the Jordanian Department of Antiquities assembled a team of scholars to begin examining, assembling, and translating the scrolls with the intent of publishing them.

Between 1952 and 1967, photographer Najib Albina documented the five-stage process of the sorting and assembly of the scrolls done by the curator and staff of the Palestine Archaeological Museum, using infrared photography.

The initial publication, assembled by Dominique Barthélemy and Józef Milik, was published as Qumran Cave 1 in 1955, beginning the Discoveries in the Judaean Desert series by Oxford University Press.

With the appointment of Dutch-Israeli textual scholar Emanuel Tov as editor-in-chief of the Dead Sea Scrolls Publication Project in 1990, publication accelerated. His team produced five volumes covering the Cave 4 documents by 1995 and 32 volumes between 1990 and 2009.

Image source: Emanuel Tov

The long-running controversy over access to unpublished scrolls ended in 1991, when the Biblical Archaeology Society published the 'Facsimile Edition of the Dead Sea Scrolls', after an intervention of the Israeli government and the IAA.

In 1991, researchers Ben Zion Wacholder and Martin Abegg at Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati announced the creation of a computer program that used previously published scrolls to reconstruct the unpublished texts.

In 1991, Emanuel Tov was appointed as the chairman of the Dead Sea Scrolls Foundation, and publication of the scrolls followed in the same year.

Beginning in 1993, NASA used digital infrared imaging technology to produce photographs of Dead Sea Scrolls fragments, revealing text invisible to the naked eye.

In November 2007 the Dead Sea Scrolls Foundation commissioned London publisher Facsimile Editions Limited to produce facsimile editions of The Great Isaiah Scroll (1QIsaa), The Order of the Community (1QS), and The Pesher to Habakkuk (1QpHab), based on 1948 photographs.

Image source: Isaiah Scroll

The content of the scrolls was published in a 40-volume series by Oxford University Press between 1955 and 2009 known as Discoveries in the Judaean Desert; the final volume, Volume XL, was published in 2009.

A further 46 sets including facsimiles of three fragments from Cave 4—Testimonia (4Q175), Pesher Isaiahb (4Q162), and Qohelet (4Q109), now in the National Archaeological Museum in Amman, Jordan—were announced in May 2009.

On 25 September 2011 the Israel Museum Digital Dead Sea Scrolls site went online. Since 2011, five complete scrolls have been digitized: the Great Isaiah Scroll, Community Rule Scroll, Commentary on Habakkuk Scroll, Temple Scroll, and War Scroll.

Image source: Shrine of the Book

On 18 December 2012 the first output of the IAA digitization project was launched together with Google on the dedicated site Deadseascrolls.org.il, making high-resolution images of the scrolls freely accessible online.

Image source: List of the Dead Sea Scrolls

In March 1948 the 1948 Arab–Israeli War prompted the move of some of the scrolls to Beirut, Lebanon, for safekeeping amid the regional conflict.

In early 1953, the scrolls were moved to the Palestine Archaeological Museum (commonly called the Rockefeller Museum) in Jordanian-held East Jerusalem, and through their transportation suffered more deterioration and damage.

Image source: Rockefeller Archeological Museum

Four of the Dead Sea Scrolls eventually went up for sale in an advertisement placed on 1 June 1954 in The Wall Street Journal.

On 1 July 1954, the scrolls, after delicate negotiations and accompanied by three people including Mar Samuel, arrived at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York.

The scrolls were purchased by Professor Mazar and Yigael Yadin, son of Professor Sukenik, for $250,000 (approximately $3,000,000 in 2025 dollars), and brought to Jerusalem.

Image source: Yigael Yadin

The majority of the Dead Sea Scrolls collection, which had been kept at the Rockefeller Museum, was moved to Jerusalem's Shrine of the Book (a part of the Israel Museum) after the building's completion in April 1965.

The Palestine Archaeological Museum, which operated under an international board, was nationalized by Jordan's King Hussein in November 1966, shortly before Jordan lost control of East Jerusalem in the 1967 Arab–Israeli War.

Following the 1967 Arab–Israeli War, Jordan was defeated and Israel began to occupy the West Bank and East Jerusalem, bringing the scrolls under Israeli custody—a status disputed by Jordan and the Palestinian Authority on territorial, legal, and humanitarian grounds.

Image source: Six-Day War

In 1992 a copyright case, Qimron v. Shanks, began over unauthorized publication of reconstructed scroll text. In 1993 district court Judge Dalia Dorner ruled for Elisha Qimron; in 2000 the Israeli Supreme Court under Judge Aharon Barak upheld the verdict in Qimron's favour.

Image source: Dead Sea Scrolls

Since 2002, many forgeries of Dead Sea Scrolls have appeared on black markets, complicating scholarship and collecting.

Image source: Museum of the Bible

Since 2013, the part of the Dead Sea Scrolls collection held by Jordan has been on display at The Jordan Museum in Amman.

Image source: Jordan Museum

In 2020, the Museum of the Bible in the United States reported that all 16 purported 'Dead Sea Scroll fragments' it had acquired between 2009 and 2014 were in fact modern forgeries.

The initial radiocarbon test performed in 1950 was on a piece of linen from one of the caves, providing early scientific dating evidence related to the scrolls' context.

Nine tiny Tefillin strips were excavated in 1952 and then stored unopened for six decades before being rediscovered by the Israel Antiquities Authority in 2014.

Damp conditions from temporary storage of the scrolls in the Ottoman Bank vault from 1956 to 1957 led to a more rapid rate of deterioration of the scrolls.

By 1958 it was noted that up to 5% of some of the scrolls had completely deteriorated, highlighting the urgent need for better conservation measures.

Gerald Lankester Harding, director of the Jordanian Department of Antiquities, began working on piecing the fragments together but did not finish this work before his death in 1979.

Image source: Gerald Lankester Harding

In 1991, the Israel Antiquities Authority established a temperature-controlled laboratory for the storage and preservation of the scrolls, greatly improving conservation conditions.

Image source: Israel Antiquities Authority

Nine tiny Tefillin strips were rediscovered by the Israel Antiquities Authority in 2014, after they had been stored unopened for six decades following their excavation in 1952.

In a paper published in 2020 in the journal Cell, researchers from Tel Aviv University showed that DNA extracted from the scrolls can be used to sort different scroll fragments based on animal species and variations in the nuclear genome of individual fragments.

In 2025, a series of radiocarbon tests were carried out on samples from thirty scrolls. The study found earlier dates and coexistence of Herodian and Hasmonean scripts into the 2nd and 3rd century BCE, and possible pre-Hasmonean evidence of scribal literacy.

A new study published in 2025 used artificial intelligence to analyze the scrolls. Analysis shows that the date range of the Herodian manuscripts is much wider than previously thought, proposed to extend 'from the second century CE all the way back to the second century BCE'.