The “Horoscope” Scroll Found In The Judean Desert

One of the most interesting – not to say mysterious – scrolls discovered in the Judaean Desert is a scroll called the “Horoscope.”

This unique composition was written in Hebrew in the reverse direction – from left to right- and contains signs in Greek, Aramaic, and ancient Hebrew script, as well as code.

“From the writing style, it seems the text was intended only for those who were supposed to know how to read it,” says Dr. Oren Ableman, a scroll curator-researcher in the Judaean Desert Scrolls Unit of the Israel Antiquities Authority. “The texts were apparently secret, comprehensible only to the leadership of the Scrolls sect.”

The scroll depicts a fascinating worldview whereby a person’s birth date determines their physical characteristics, as well as the degree of light and darkness in their soul: every date on the calendar is linked to different amounts of light and darkness, and accordingly, also the amounts of light and darkness (good and evil) in the soul of the person born on that date.

“There are researchers who hypothesize that this work is connected to an examination which new candidates to the sect had to undergo before being accepted into the community whose members identified themselves as ‘sons of light,'” says Dr. Ableman. “It is, in fact, a kind of guide to writing a ‘horoscope,’ based on the birth date to determine personality and physical traits. Every new member had to prove that they were indeed fit to walk among the righteous. This, in effect, suggests that a person could believe in the sect’s beliefs and customs but still be rejected because they were not born on the right date, or their head shape did not fit.”

Photo: Shai Halevi, Israel Antiquities Authority.