(Originally posted: 4/14/2013)
I recently visited the Cincinnati Museum Center again, this time for their exhibit “Dead Sea Scrolls: Life and Faith in Ancient Times.” The exhibit had run at the museum since November, and unfortunately today (April 14, 2013) is the final day. Even so, I think a quick review is called for. Click through for my thoughts.
Like the other recent big-draw exhibits at the Cincinnati Museum Center, this one is a travelling exhibit, but nowhere in their literature or on their website have I been able to discover where it’s going next. That may not be a particularly bad thing. All things considered, despite great promise, this turned out not to be a great experience. As with the Pompeii exhibit last year, however, visitors were allowed to take non-flash photography throughout much of the exhibit, and my camera phone did a marginally acceptable job.
Part of the problem with my experience was just that I waited so long to see the show. When I went on Saturday afternoon, April 6, it was the next-to-last weekend, and the show was essentially sold-out. I and my family ordered tickets from the website several days early (getting the last three adult tickets that afternoon!), showed up a half hour early, and still ended up standing outside the exhibit hall for 10 minutes past the entry time. Then, once in the exhibit, we stood in a disorganized crowd of people for probably 10 minutes before those ahead of us had moved on far enough for use to begin looking closely at the artifacts. It only got more crowded after that, with the actual display of the Dead Sea Scrolls themselves so dense you’d have thought we were at a rock concert. This is hardly the fault of the museum, though, as the final days of an exhibit showing the real Dead Sea Scrolls was guaranteed to be swamped.
The structure of the exhibit, though, didn’t make up for the crowds. The title of the show is something of a misnomer. “Life and Faith in Ancient Times” should really have been “Life and Faith in Iron Age Israel,” since most of the artifacts on display seem to have come from that one time and place. There were other Israelite and Judean artifacts from other Biblical periods on display, but almost nothing from other cultures. With a title like that, I’d hoped to see some interesting juxtapositions between Israelite monotheism and the surrounding pagan religions.
Also, the exhibit was very slow to begin. Once you passed the ticket-takers, you entered a small, dark, and empty room, with a single Bible verse (Genesis 12:1) projected on the walls in various languages. The lights went out entirely, and a recorded voice read the verse; then you moved on to the next room. What this was supposed to accomplish, I don’t know, because there was never a mention of Abram, Genesis, or the verse again in the entire show.
In the first real gallery, much of the floor was covered in gravel, with a walkway through the middle. The walls were covered in large-scale projections of an archaeological excavation, and a live docent/guide introduced the show. She was dressed in a cliche khaki shorts/cargo vest/pith helmet costume, and spoke way too quickly and with awkward intonation–it was clear that the words were recited from rote memorization, and had lost all meaning to her. The speech itself was about three large ceramic jars around the room–one from each of the temple periods, and one of the Dead Sea Scrolls jars. Aside from the last, there really wasn’t much explanation about why the other two were chosen. The room was obviously supposed to recreate an archaeological excavation, but I’ve seen better recreations in small, local museums.
In the second hall, the exhibit became self-guided. This is where the crowd became disorganized, and we ended up standing still for far too long. This hall was a timeline of sorts, with dates projected on the floor, beginning at 2013 and working their way back to 1000 BCE or so. On one wall was a single display case, running the length of the hall, with artifacts of the appropriate ages. These were some of the only non-Israelite artifacts on display.
Following that hall, one entered the exhibit proper, and things became much more free-flowing. The artifacts on display were grouped relatively well, by purpose, type, and material. One small room off the main hall was labeled “An Israelite Four-Room House” and showed the various implements one might find in a typical Israelite Iron Age house. Unfortunately, the artifacts were just laid out on shelves as they would be in any museum display. The exhibitors missed a real opportunity to show what an actual house would have actually looked like.
The main complaint one might level against much of the show was that there were just a lot of jars. Lots and lots of very big jars. More jars than just about anyone but an archaeologist would be interested in seeing. Potsherds are the most common artifact recovered, but these were full, unbroken or reconstructed jars that would have held multiple gallons. Why show so many? Why not include fewer of those, and more other kinds of artifacts?
After a certain point in the exhibit, photography was no longer allowed, and this was when one approached the display of the actual Dead Sea Scrolls. Other artifacts (some, again, from periods after the Biblical period) were also on display in these galleries. One of the most interesting was a masonry block from the Western Wall of the Second Temple. It was sitting out, sort of half-surrounded by a mock-up of the rest of the wall. You were allowed to touch the block, and you could write prayers on note paper to slip into the cracks in the mock-up wall. Those prayers, supposedly, were collected regularly and would be mailed to Jerusalem to be put in the actual Western Wall.
As I said, the display of the Dead Sea Scrolls themselves was crowded to the point where it was unpleasant. Ironically, the most interesting scroll, the Ten Commandments scroll that had only arrived for display a week or two before, was displayed separately, and was being mostly ignored by the visitors. In the center of the room, though, was a vary large doughnut-shaped table, into which ten or so small windows had been embedded. Under those glass panes were the scrolls themselves. My mother, who saw the show with me, remarked on how small the scrolls were (some no more than a few inches in any dimension), but what really disappointed me was how far below the actual glass they were. I realize that the demands of conserving 2000 year old documents probably requires a few inches of separation between them and the grubby outside world. However, the combination of glare on the glass, the crowds, and the simple distance of 6 inches or more, made it impossible to actually study the scrolls.
Two more brief comments: one of the scrolls on display dated to the Bar Kochba rebellion, a full half-century after the Q’umran community, but no mention was made of this in the interpretive materials. Also, the most interesting pieces in this part of the show were in a tiny alcove hidden in the corner. These were the actual ostraka used by the Jewish Zealots at Masada to draw lots for their ritual suicide in 73 A.D. Seeing these little pieces of pottery with their quickly jotted names actually carried more impact for me than the scrolls themselves.
After the Scrolls gallery, you emptied into a final hall with some information on the modern rediscovery and study of the scrolls, which was a nice touch, but too little, too late to fix what was wrong with the rest of the show.
All things considered, I enjoyed the opportunity to view these remarkable documents, but I’m sure things could have been done better. Maybe next time.