Oldest vessels in Cincinnati on display now

I snapped this photo of household vessels on display.        

A visit to the Dead Sea Scrolls: Life and Faith in Ancient Times at Cincinnati Museum Center will not only reveal some of the most significant historical documents ever found, but as they are more than 2,000 years old, they surely must be the oldest vessels in Cincinnati now. The scrolls are significant because they contain the oldest known copies of the Hebrew Bible. The exhibit also includs other ancient handwritten  texts and remains of religious objects, weapons, stone carvings, textiles, mosaics, everyday household items, jewelry and ceramics.

Vessels play a major role in the discovery of the scrolls. The 11 caves where the scrolls were found are in the ancient ruins of  Qumran, 13 miles east of Jerusalem. According to the docent on my tour,  a Bedouin goat-hearder discovered the scrolls in the spring of 1947 while looking for a lost goat along the cliffs of the Dead Sea. He threw a stone into a cave on a cliff to try to roust out the goat and heard the sound of pottery breaking. The herder climbed up and found pottery vessels in the cave. Taking a lid off a vessel, he found ancient parchment inside. The goat herder sold seven of the scrolls to an antiquities dealer, who in turn sold the scrolls to people at Hebrew University and Syrian Orthodox monastery of St. Mark. Four were then resold to the American School of Oriental Research -- which brought them to the attention of American and European researchers. Between 1949 and 1956, ten additional caves were discovered and yielded more scrolls, thousands of fragments of scrolls and other manuscripts.

But this blog is is about vessels. One of the first stories the docent in the exhibit tells is about how vessels preserved these amazing historical artifacts. Throughout the exhibit, you see vessels of various shapes, sizes and purposes in this exhibit. A storeroom was discovered in one of the Dead Sea excavation sites and it contained more than 1,000 pottery items arranged by function for cooking, serving, pouring, drinking and dining. I was surprised by a large ceremonial bathtub which probably was used for some kind of purification ritual. I was stunned by the intricacy of jewelry and stamped images. While we tend to think of “branding” as a modern marketing concept, I saw an ancient pottery stamp that was used on bread. One storeroom found during the excavation contained more than a thousand pottery items arranged by function --  cooking, serving, pouring, drinking and dining.

The show is open through mid-April. Here is a link to find out more information about the exhibit, hours and admission prices. http://www.cincymuseum.org/dead-sea-scrolls

--Nancy Berlier