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A comment on Hebrew University Archaeologists Find 12th Dead Sea Scrolls Cave. Parent comment

Re:Hebrew University Archaeologists Find 12th Dead Sea Scrol... by jcranmer on Thursday February 09, 2017 @11:13AM (#13607926)
The Code of Hammurabi survives in virtually complete form on a stele and pips the Dead Sea Scrolls by 1500 years or so. A reasonably complete version of the Epic of Gilgamesh is 1000 years or so older than the Dead Sea Scrolls.

So it's by no means the earliest essentially-complete collection of manuscripts found. That said, it is still in sparse company. As far as I can tell, the next major complete manuscript are a few copies of the Bible dating to mid-4th century. Complete versions of things like the Odyssey and the Iliad date only to around 1000.

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Re:Hebrew University Archaeologists Find 12th Dead Sea Scrol... by judah on Thursday February 09, 2017 @11:56AM (#13608424)
Right - the DSS isn't the oldest document, but it is among the oldest surviving documents.

This is what the article claimed: the DSS are "some of the oldest surviving documents on earth."

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