▲The following year, the discovery was announced to an astonished world: what had been uncovered were manuscripts of immeasurable religious and historical significance, and subsequently declared as the only known biblical documents written before 100 CE.

▲Among the manuscripts Bedouin shepherd Muhammed edh-Dhib had initially retrieved was the Isaiah scroll (pictured), which contains almost the whole Book of Isaiah.

▲Between 1951 and 1956, 11 caves in Qumran were identified as depositories for various scrolls by a team from the American Schools of Oriental Research, headed by Roland de Vaux.

▲That initial 1946 discovery also unearthed the Habakkuk Commentary, a pesher (a type of commentary in Hebrew) written sometime in the later half of the 1st century BCE.

▲By 2008, fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls were being photographed digitally with the aim of making the 2,000-year-old documents available to the public and researchers on the Internet.

▲Pictured: a conservation analyst from the Israel Antiquities Authority examines fragments of the 2,000-year-old Dead Sea Scrolls at a laboratory before photographing them.

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In 2011, Israel put 5,000 fragments of the ancient Dead Sea Scrolls online in a partnership with Google.

▲In November 1951, a full excavation of Qumran had commenced. By the end of 1952, five more caves had been discovered, each giving up yet more scrolls and fragments. In fact, 90% of the total number of scrolls discovered were found in Cave 4. Pictured: scrolls in situ.

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In 2017, archaeologists stumbled across another cave on cliffs west of Qumran. However, closer examination revealed that Cave 12 had been plundered, probably in the 1950s. Sadly, the scrolls it undoubtedly concealed are believed lost forever.

▲Since their discovery, small portions of the Dead Sea Scrolls have been put on temporary display in exhibitions at museums around the world. Pictured is a queue of people outside the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. for the very first touring exhibition in 1965.

▲To this day, lively debate surrounds the origin of the Dead Sea Scrolls. The general view among biblical scholars is that the scrolls were the product of a sect of Jews living at Qumran called the Essenes.

▲The aforementioned Isaiah scroll is the exception. It measures about 734 cm (24 ft) long and ranges from 25.3 to 27 cm high (0.83 to 0.89 ft), with 54 columns of text.

▲Today, anyone with an interest in the history of the scrolls can view a digital archive of images and read more about one of the greatest archaeological finds of the 20th century.

▲In all, scholars have assembled a collection of nearly 900 separate scrolls from the 11 caves. Unfortunately, the majority of the scrolls consist of tiny, brittle fragments.

▲This is the oldest complete copy of the Book of Isaiah. Written on 17 sheets of parchment, it's the only scroll from the Qumran caves to be preserved almost in its entirety.

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In 1947, the scrolls caught the attention of American biblical scholar and archaeologist John C. Trever, who quickly realized the historical importance of these rare finds.

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The text of the Dead Sea Scrolls is written in four different languages: Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, and Nabataean.

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Another of the original finds included the Genesis Apocryphon (pictured). The document records a conversation between the biblical figure Lamech, son of Methuselah, and his son, Noah.

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The shrine's unique white dome embodies the lids of the jars in which the first scrolls were found.

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The seven original scrolls are housed in the purpose-built Shrine of the Book, with the Isaiah scroll a central exhibit. Also housed here is the Aleppo Codex, a medieval bound manuscript of the Hebrew Bible.

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The Cave 1 site yielded further Dead Sea Scroll fragments, plus linen cloth, jars (pictured), and other artifacts.

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One of the shepherds, Muhammed edh-Dhib, volunteered to retrieve the jars. Curious, he opened one of the vessels and discovered inside a handful of parchment scrolls.

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In 1946, three Bedouin shepherds chanced upon a collection of ceramic jars in a cave at Wadi Qumran, near the Dead Sea.

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By the end of 1948, scholars had yet to identify the original cave where the fragments had been found. The 1948 Arab–Israeli War had hampered all efforts to identify the site. But in 1949, Cave 1, as it became known, was rediscovered.

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The Shrine of the Book is part of the Israel Museum, located in Jerusalem.

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Interestingly, the existence of the Damascus Document, found in Cave 4 in 1952, was already known to scholars: two fragments had previously been found in 1897 as part of the Cairo Geniza collection of manuscripts discovered in a synagogue in Egypt.

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Not realizing how important they were, the shepherd took the scrolls, which numbered seven in total, back to his desert camp as keepsakes. Eventually, he decided to sell the documents, which subsequently changed hands over the next 12 months.

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It's one of the greatest archaeological finds of the 20th century. Hidden in caves in the desert, the Dead Sea Scrolls were identified as ancient Jewish manuscripts—the only known surviving biblical documents written before 100 CE. Discovered in 1946 by Bedouin shepherds, the parchment scrolls have immense historical, religious, and linguistic significance, and shed light on events that took place over 2,000 years ago.

Browse this gallery and revisit the story behind this historic chance encounter.