An Israel Antiquities Authority team uncovered the earliest known biblical scrolls, the world's oldest woven basket and a 6,000-year-old mummified child among others in a challenging archaeological excavation inside the Cave of Horrors, in the Judean Desert Nature Reserve, as seen in footage released on Tuesday.

The finds were discovered by Israel Antiquities Authority archaeologists and retrieved from a cave surrounded by cliffs in a dramatic national operation.

"The high cliffs of 300 to 400 metres (1,000 to 1,300 feet) in a single drop with these enigmatic revenants that no one reaches, were the ultimate haven and in one period of human history, families fled to the caves in the Judean Desert and we really don't know anything else. Therefore, it's of paramount importance," said Ofer Sion, Head of the survey department of the Israel Antiquities Authority.

Archaeologists scaled to the cliffs to access the caves, where they admired dozens of fragments of biblical scroll, a 6,000-year-old partially mummified skeleton of a child wrapped in cloth and the 10,000-year-old world's oldest basket.

"To enter the first time a cave in which Bar Kokhba's [period] fighters sat, to know that you're the first to come in there since then, it blows your mind," archaeologist Chaim Cohen said.

The Dead Sea scrolls are considered to be the most important archaeological discovery of the 20th century, bearing Greek verses from the books of the prophets Zechariah and Nahum, including portions of the Book of the Twelve Minor Prophets.

Credit: Ruptly


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