By Daoud Kuttab

A German biblical archaeology expert has called on the Jordanian Tourism and Antiquities Ministry to work on restoring the valuable Dead Sea scrolls in its possession since the 1950s.
Dr. Alexander Schick one of the world’s leading experts on the discoveries in the Qumran caves in the middle of the twentieth century made the call while leading a German touristic group on a fifteen-day visit to Christian holy sites in Jordan. “Jordan has a lot of treasures and one of the biggest treasures that Christians all over the world are fascinated with are the Dead Sea Scrolls,” he told Milhilard.org.

According to Schick in previous years Jordan had a small museum on the citadel where all the possessions of the Dead Sea Scrolls that were found in the Qumran caves were displayed. “Now Jordan has a wonderful new museum with a high-level scientific exhibition, but because of the space limitation, artifacts from Qumran are displayed only on two sets of tables.”
Schick says that the Jordanian-owned scrolls cannot be seen anywhere else except in Jordan. “But I know they are damaged, and they need specialists to restore them.” Schick compares what Jordan did before the 1967 war to the scrolls. “They can do what they did in the Palestine Archaeological Museum in the 1950s. They had a wonderful exhibition of the Dead Sea Scrolls,”

The German Biblical archeology professor knows that the restoration of the ancient scrolls is very costly, but I am sure it is worth restoring these treasures that Jordan possesses and for which the world would love to support, and many scholars are keen to be involved.”
Schick also notes that another treasure that has not been properly addressed is the Tall al Hamam site in the As-Salt area. “I had my doubts about the claims by some experts that this location is the original Sodom site, but recent research has made me change my mind and start accepting that this idea is a real possibility,” Shick says that the current owners of the land where the Al Hammam site exists, which is a huge privately-owned plot of land, are willing to share it with researchers hoping that this could become a major attraction in the area.

During a visit by the German delegation to the historic Madaba Mosaic, the German professor made a promise to the Orthodox priest that is in charge of the site to make available to him text and pictures of the mosaic to use in any form of publicity to the world-famous mosaics that go back to the early days of Christians in Jordan.