The
Dead Sea Scrolls, in the narrow sense of
Qumran Caves Scrolls, are a collection of some 981 different
texts discovered between 1946 and 1956 in eleven caves in the immediate vicinity of the ancient settlement at
Khirbet Qumran in the
West Bank. The caves are located about 2 kilometres inland from the northwest shore of the
Dead Sea, from which they derive their name.