Vendyl Jones's Qumran "incense" is lost

ANCIENT MATERIAL CULTURE? Inside the tragic, decades-long mystery of Qumran's lost Second Temple incense. The vast majority of material was lost after a 2025 murder. All that remains is a small amount of dust collected from the floor and a few samples preserved by the Jones family. (Josh Aronson, Jerusalem Post).

I'm very sorry to hear about the murder.

As for the "incense." I have a bit more on it here (cf. here, but link rotted). Mainstream views seem to be that the material is either just dirt or a local cleaning agent, and its status is, at best, unconfirmed.

The article reports that the Qumran Project is planning to conduct scientific tests on the surviving residue of the material. Given that, reportedly, much of is floor sweepings, I imagine modern contamination could be a concern. But let's see what they find.

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