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Estate of John M. Allegro

FATHER KNOWS BEST. Père Roland de Vaux (left), one of the original excavators of Khirbet Qumran, believed the scrolls found in the caves had been written, collected and ultimately hidden away by the Essenes, a Jewish sectarian group that may have established the small, secluded settlement of Qumran in the late second century B.C.E. While some scholars have since argued that there is, in fact, no connection between the site of Qumran and the scrolls, the evidence from the caves now indicates that de Vaux may have been right after all. He is pictured here discussing a piece of Qumran pottery with the head of the Jordanian Department of Antiquities G. Lankester Harding (right) and Father Jozef Milik (center).