What do you think about this?
Among the Dead Sea Scrolls, the ancient documents found in caves near the shore of the Dead Sea, there is one that is nothing like the others. Discovered in a cave at Qumran in 1952, it is not written on fragile parchment or papyrus. It is engraved on thin sheets of almost pure copper. And it does not contain scripture or prayer. It is a treasure map.
The Copper Scroll lists sixty four locations across the ancient Holy Land where staggering amounts of gold and silver were said to be hidden. It names cisterns, tombs, aqueducts, and buried courtyards, with directions like so many talents buried under the steps, or bars of gold beneath a certain terrace. Added together, the totals it describes would amount to tons of precious metal, a fortune almost too vast to believe.
And here is the puzzle that has haunted scholars for more than seventy years. Not one item on that list has ever been found. The directions use landmarks that vanished two thousand years ago, so a stairway or a cistern that made perfect sense to the writer means nothing to us now. Some believe it records the hidden treasury of the great Temple in Jerusalem, spirited away before the Romans destroyed it.
Is it possible that a genuine ancient fortune is still out there, sitting exactly where a scribe carved its location into copper, waiting on directions we can no longer follow?
A list of real buried temple gold, or an ancient legend set in metal? What do you think became of the treasure of the Copper Scroll?
What do you think about this? On January 20, 1996, three young women in Varginha, Brazil, saw a four foot creature with oily skin and red eyes crouched by a wall. The army was in town that morning. A policeman said to have handled it died a month later. Cover story, or Brazil’s Roswell?
What do you think about this? In 1800 settlers at Conneaut, Ohio, opened a four acre burial ground in rows and reported skeletons over seven feet, jaws that fit over a man’s face, double rows of teeth. The graves were plowed under within a generation. Tall tale, or a people buried twice?
What do you think about this? The Iron Pillar of Delhi is six tons of forged iron from around 400 AD. It has stood outside through 1,600 years of monsoons and never rusted, thanks to a protective film from phosphorus rich iron nobody made again. Lucky recipe, or knowledge lost on purpose?
What do you think about this? North Sea trawlers pull up mammoth teeth, flint tools and a carved harpoon from 120 feet deep. Until 8,000 years ago that seabed was Doggerland, a forested land the size of Britain, drowned by rising seas and a tsunami. The lost land of every old story?
What do you think about this? In 1974 a Florida family found a polished 22 pound steel ball in burned brush. It hummed when a guitar played, rolled across rooms on its own and changed direction. Navy X rays showed objects inside, origin unknown. Valve ball, or something that landed?
What do you think about this? The Whaley House in San Diego was built in 1857 where a man was slowly hanged five years earlier. A baby and a daughter later died inside. Visitors report footsteps in empty rooms and a pressure on the throat where the gallows stood. Old house, or long memory?
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