Qumran 2000 Overview

Annotated, Expanded English Translation of Qumran Final Report, Volume I
Stephen Pfann

The idea of an album of the photographs from the site of Qumran was launched by our friend Mr. John Strugnell, at the time leader of the international team in charge of the publication of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Until then, our intention had only been aimed at illustrating the different upcoming studies with photographs chosen from the archives of the École Biblique. Indeed, due to the interest in the archaeology of Qumran among scholars, a photographic album of the field work seemed appropriate. Once the decision to compile this volume had been made, the task of assembling the iconographic material had to be organized: to choose a large number of photographs, to make the selection coherent related to the topography, and to ensure that the album could become a self-contained working tool.

We chose to present the remains and the architecture starting from the core of the site that seemed the most ancient and going towards the successive additions on the periphery. At the same time, we offer a visual picture to the description by locus, as presented bv the svnthesis of the excavator's field notes. Having accepted the idea of publishing the photographic album, we thought to place it at the end of the foreseen publications, without trying to change the order usually followed in archaeological publications. However, the publisher, Mr. Max Kuchler, proposed to make it the starting point of the series, in order that future contributors could refer to it. The idea seemed so convincing to us that it was immediately accepted.

This publication responds to various expectations: many archaeologists, as well as epigraphers, exegetes and historians, studying what has been published of the excavation of Qumran, had been disappointed by the lack of available material. Herein is first-hand material: the photographs, and first-hand documents that describe them, the excavation journals and registers.

In going back over the time when the materials were collected by the very people who participated in the excavations, we first .drew up an inventory of the available photographs by checking the archives of the different institutes likely to possess them. Initially we wanted to compile a list of the negatives of the photographs noting their photographers, format and location. We abandoned this plan: some negatives are unknown or lost, others could not be located (one can hope that they will be one day), and still others have deteriorated. Either the chemistry was not well regulated when the films were processed or the storage conditions were not conducive to their preservation. On the other hand, the list of prints collected from different sources became longer; quite naturally, those involved in the excavations were more interested in a distribution of the pictures than in the conservation of the negatives. At the time of excavation, some series of photographs were exchanged between the École Biblique, the Rockefeller Museum, the Department of Antiquities in Amman and people associated with the excavation team, who photographed the site, the caves and the region at their own initiative.

Thus, the catalog of photographs that we include here is of prints and not of negatives. Since the origin or attribution of the pictures is not always certain, it seems inevitable that some photographs are duplicated in the inventory. It would have been necessary to compare the albums of the different sources to find the repetitions, but time and especially borders prevented us from doing so. It does not matter; that prints are conserved in two places should even be seen as an advantage, the more so as the negative may be lost. Finally, this inventory does not pretend to be exhaustive. Other persons may continue and expand it further.

The photographers are numerous. S. Husseini visited the ruins in 1946, one vear before the discoverv of the scrolls. The photographers of the Department of Antiquities of Jordan, Ismail Azaz, Georges Momidjan and Tofa'a Ragheb were responsible for photographing the site during the excavation seasons between 1951 and 1958. R. Reed explored the caves in the cliff in 1952. R. Brown did so between 1951 and 1953, J. Starckv from 1954, and some others, not securely identified, but in close association with the excavation team, gave some of their photographs to the Ecole Biblique.

Nonetheless, the vast majority of the photographs remains those from the École Biblique itself. Nearly 1,200 taken bv Roland de Vaux, or perhaps photographers attached to the team, were recorded. The Palestine Archaeological Museum (PAM) Rockefeller Foundation, which was alternately managed by the American, English and French Schools alternately managed Archaeology in Jerusalem, were partners in the research project on Qumran. It was in this way that the personnel of the museum, and more especially the photographers, were involved in the excavation. Their work was registered in the photographic archives of the Rockefeller Museum. The Department of Antiquities of Jordan was also a partner in the project from the beginning of the research.