The Allegro Qumran Collection on Microfiche

by John Marco Allegro, Helen K. Bond

This microfiche edition of photographs contains prints of all the black-and-white negatives in the Allegro Qumran Photograph Archive in the Manchester Museum. The originals were taken by John M. Allegro between 1955 and 1962. Several colour photographs are also represented in black and white. The several hundred photographs are arranged in four categories: archaeology, biographical pictures (of those involved in the Qumran excavations and the decipherment of the scrolls), the Copper Scroll, and other photographs of documents from Qumran and elsewhere. The importance of the collection is self-evident for Qumran specialists, filling out our knowledge of the Qumran remains, but especially giving further information on the Copper Scroll and other texts, notably from Cave 4.

Hardcover

First published May 1, 1996

About the author

John Marco Allegro was a scholar who challenged orthodox views of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Bible and the history of religion, with books that attracted popular attention and scholarly derision.

After service in the Royal Navy during World War II, Allegro started to train for the Methodist ministry but transferred to a degree in Oriental Studies at the University of Manchester. In 1953 he was invited to become the first British representative on the international team working on the recently discovered Dead Sea Scrolls in Jordan. The following year he was appointed assistant lecturer in Comparative Semitic Philology at Manchester, and held a succession of lectureships there until he resigned in 1970 to become a full-time writer. In 1961 he was made Honorary Adviser on the Dead Sea Scrolls to the Jordanian government.

Allegro's thirteen books include The Dead Sea Scrolls (1956), The Treasure of the Copper Scroll (1960), The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross (1970) and The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Christian Myth (1979) as well as Discoveries in the Judaean Desert of Jordan vol. V (1968) and articles in academic journals such as the Journal of Biblical Literature, Palestine Exploration Quarterly and Journal of Semitic Studies, and in the popular press.