Dead Sea scrolls display scrapped amid fears artefacts wouldn't be returned to Israel

The guarantee would have meant that Germany would have dismissed any claims by Palestinian activists that the scrolls, part of the Israeli state collection, are Palestinian-owned. But the German authorities were not prepared to issue the guarantee.

Boris Rhein, the culture minister from the state of Hesse, was quoted by German news agencies saying that Germany’s Foreign Ministry and federal commissioner for cultural affairs believe that the ownership of the Dead Sea Scrolls is unclear. 

The scrolls, discovered in the Qumran Caves during the 20th century, date from biblical times and comprise handwritten manuscripts of great historical and religious importance. 

Palestinians and their supporters argue that as they were discovered in the West Bank, this makes them Palestinian by rights, even though the area was in British hands at the time, 

They also claim the Rockefeller Museum, in east Jerusalem where a significant number of scrolls were housed, was in Arab hands before 1967. Israel captured the museum, and the scrolls held there, in the Six-Day War in 1967.

The Israeli Foreign Ministry declined to comment on the situation. Eyal Regev, a Dead Sea Scrolls expert at Bar Ilan University, said the scrolls have been politicised by people who know little about their actual content. “For those who are not really interested in the scrolls, they are a political matter,” he said. “They have become an excuse for people to rase a political issue everywhere they can.”