The Great Isaiah Scroll (1QIsaᵃ), one of the most famous and best-preserved biblical manuscripts found among the Dead Sea Scrolls... The scrolls were discovered in late 1946 or early 1947, when a young Bedouin shepherd searching for a lost goat near the Dead Sea threw a rock into a cave and heard pottery shatter. Inside were clay jars holding ancient manuscripts. Over the next decade, searches of 11 caves turned up the remains of about 1,000 texts, most written between the 200s BC and the first century AD. Before then, the oldest complete Hebrew Bible manuscripts dated to around 1000 AD. The Great Isaiah Scroll, pictured here, is the only biblical scroll found almost complete. It stretches about 24 feet long. Later Jewish scribes known as the Masoretes were famous for their precision. They counted the letters and words in each book and noted its middle letter, so they could check every new copy for mistakes. Not every scroll matched later versions so closely. Some preserve different editions of biblical books, showing that more than one textual tradition existed in ancient times. In 1954, four of the scrolls were advertised for sale in The Wall Street Journal. Israeli archaeologist Yigael Yadin secretly arranged their purchase for $250,000, and they’re now displayed in Jerusalem. #archaeohistories