<Tr> <Th> Present location </Th> <Td> Various </Td> </Tr> <P> Dead Sea Scrolls (also Qumran Caves Scrolls) are ancient Jewish religious, mostly Hebrew, manuscripts found in the Qumran Caves near the Dead Sea . </P> <P> Many thousands of written fragments have been discovered in the Dead Sea area . They represent the remnants of larger manuscripts damaged by natural causes or through human interference, with the vast majority only holding small scraps of text . However, a small number of well - preserved, almost intact manuscripts have survived--fewer than a dozen among those from the Qumran Caves . Researchers have assembled a collection of some 981 different manuscripts--discovered in 1946 / 47 and in 1956--from 11 caves . The 11 Qumran Caves lie in the immediate vicinity of the Hellenistic - period Jewish settlement at Khirbet Qumran in the eastern Judaean Desert, in the West Bank . The caves are located about one mile (1.6 kilometres) west of the northwest shore of the Dead Sea, whence they derive their name . Scholarly consensus dates the Qumran Caves Scrolls from the last three centuries BCE and from the first century CE . Bronze coins found at the same sites form a series beginning with John Hyrcanus (in office 135--104 BCE) and continuing until the period of the First Jewish--Roman War (66--73 CE), supporting the radiocarbon and paleographic dating of the scrolls . </P> <P> In the larger sense, the Dead Sea Scrolls include manuscripts from additional Judaean Desert sites, dated as early as the 8th century BCE and as late as the 11th century CE . </P>

What was all found in the dead sea scrolls