The most complete versions of the Damascus Document were found in the genizah, and fragments of it have since been found among the Dead Sea Scrolls themselves.Īnd according to Vainstub, the version from the genizah in Cairo contains a fuller description of a ceremony referred to in the Dead Sea scroll fragments, which was misunderstood until now. (Image credit: Lebrecht Music & Arts / Alamy) Solomon Schechter studies boxes of manuscripts from the Cairo Genizah. Related: Photos: Rare inscription from King David's timeĪs a result, writings accumulated over many centuries in the Cairo Genizah and in the 1890s, Cambridge University scholar Solomon Schechter visited the site and found a a trove of hundreds of thousands of ancient manuscripts, including Hebrew religious texts, as well as works in several languages on art, literature, philosophy and science.

It was eventually stored in the Cairo Genizah, a storeroom adjoining a Jewish synagogue in Fustat, the original Arabic capital of Egypt that eventually became a southern neighborhood of the city of Cairo.ĭestroying any text that contains God's name is forbidden in Jewish religious law, even accidently, and any documents from Cairo's Jewish community were ultimately stored in the genizah just in case, at least until they could be formally buried. The Damascus Document - so-named from its numerous references to the city in Syria, possibly because Damascus was once ruled by Israel's King David - was copied from an earlier Hebrew source in about the 10th century A.D.

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