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?
