The Claim
There’s a list of 63 locations written on a scroll leading to treasure, and no one knows where the instructions refer to.
The Copper scroll is one of the famous dead sea scrolls that was found in a cave at the Khirbet Qumran archaeological site. It was discovered on March 14th of 1952 at the back of cave and was the last scroll recovered from the area.
It was originally curved round but was sent to Manchester University’s College of Technology in 1955 to be cut into strips so it could be properly read and displayed. It sits today in the Jordan Archaeological Museum on Amman’s Citadel Hill and has been made into 1 large flat piece consisting of 23 individual strips.
The contents of the scroll seem to list the location of 63 treasures that have hidden somewhere, presumably taken from a Jewish temple to be hidden away from the Romans. The scroll is written in an unusual Hebrew text, which differs from the standard Mishnaic Hebrew language used in the area at that time.
Believed to have been written around 100 CE, this would have been shortly after the destruction of Jerusalem, prompting some to believe the treasure was held by fleeing Jew’s who eventually hid it before it was found.
Out of the 64 locations listed on the scroll, one of them is another location for another scroll, and the other 63 are locations of treasure. There’s much debate about the translation of the quantities of some of the locations though, as the scrolls list one location as containing 200 tons of gold. The others all contain either gold or silver in varying amounts, but normally quite large.
So why hasn’t anyone found the treasure yet?
Well he problem is that the instructions on the scroll seem to require a knowledge of the layout of the land at the time the scrolls were written. Much would have changed in the close to 2000 years since they were written and many features referred to in the scroll would likely have disappeared.
An example of some of the locations are given below. These are the opening lines from the first column which shows the how the locations are listed.
1 = General location
2 = Specific location
3= whats there
1:1 In the ruin that is in the valley of Acor, under
1:2 the steps, with the entrance at the East,
1:3 a distance of forty cubits: a strongbox of silver and its vessels
If this doesn’t mean anything to you then don’t worry, no one has been able to find any of the locations on the list, at least not from the list itself anyway. Another good example comes from Column two, verses 1–3, “In the salt pit that is under the steps: forty-one talents of silver. In the cave of the old washer’s chamber, on the third terrace: sixty-five ingots of gold.”
No one alive could possibly have any idea which cave the “old washer” used to live, if it even was a person, and the salt pits referenced would probably have been mined dry centuries ago.
Unfortunately there’s absolutely no way of finding out where any of the locations are so finding the treasure is going to be pure luck.
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