In February 1948, four more scrolls appeared. On May 15, 1948, the state of Israel was proclaimed, and a state of war was declared by its Arab neighbors. Seven months of war followed and left Jerusalem divided and the Qumran caves into Jordanian hands. Then archeologists began returning to the cave site. Many Bedouin, deprived of their occupation as smugglers, turned to archeology with enthusiasm. Over the next four years, more than 100 manuscripts and tens of thousands of fragments were dug out of more than a dozen caves. Unfortunately, often the Bedouins were there first before archeologists and legal excavators. To multiply profits, the Bedouins started to break up manuscripts into pieces. In order to prevent this damage, the Jordanian department of antiquities set a price of one pound per square centimeter. This strategy was so successful that a flood of material reached them, down to the smallest fragments, causing the museum vaults to overflow. But then, funding got depleted. As a result, the museum offered various international organizations to “buy into” a piece of the action, as it were, with the understanding that when studies were completed there would be a distribution of the antiquities. The job of piecing together scrolls that were not mostly intact was a very manual and painstaking task.

In 1952, an unusual 23-foot long copper scroll (in relief form) was obtained – the only scroll not on leather or papyrus. It listed treasures from a Jewish temple. It is said that King David was buried somewhere under Jerusalem with a huge amount of gold and other treasures – meant to be undisturbed until a time far into the future. It was artfully constructed so that it was hidden from view. Well-known historian Josephus (37-100AD) claimed that king David was the richest of all kings, meaning that king David’s treasure was greater than Alexander the Great – who seized about 7,000 tons of gold. Also per Josephus, this treasure was only accessed two times. Once in about 150 BC when the king of Syria seized the city and the high priest took 3,000 talons of silver to pay him to leave, and he left. The second time was when king Herod sent some of his men to extract some of the wealth of the tomb, but a blast of flame filled the chamber and drove Herod’s men back. Two guards were killed and the other soldiers refused to re-enter the tomb even under penalty of death. Then Herod closed off the tomb and put a monument up to prevent anyone from entering it. When Jerusalem was destroyed in 70AD and the Israelites were scattered, likely the location of the tomb was buried under rubble and the knowledge of location was lost over time.

In June 1954, a Wall Street Journal advertisement offered for sale 4 Dead Sea scrolls dating back to at least 200 BC. These ended up being displayed in a museum in Israel. The price was $250,000. The last of the scrolls was written in ancient Aramaic.

In 1960, from out of cave #4, many fragments were assembled and photographed by the team of 8 men that originally organized and were at the Rockefeller museum on the Jordanian side of the border. Cave #4 alone brought forth 15,000 fragments from about 500 texts and scrolls. (Over the following 35 years, only 100 texts had become published.

In November 1966, the Jordanian government nationalized the Rockefeller Museum and the Dead Sea Scrolls, becoming Jordanian property.

In June 1967, the Six-Day War broke out, and on the 2nd day, Israel took control of the Rockefeller Museum. Soon after they came into possession of the 8th scroll, called the Temple Scroll, a non-Biblical scroll, with a length of 28-feet long – the longest scroll found. They found about 800 scrolls in addition to thousands of fragments. But, they were shocked to find many pieces disintegrating from a lack of preservation facilities. The scrolls contained many multiple copies of the Old Testament books we have today except for Esther.

By the 1990s, there was mounting pressure from the international community to publish the discovered manuscripts. A deadline of 1996 was set for all editors to finish their work.  Today, there have been some books published.