Giants/A copy
The assembly column
4Q530 — Book of Giantsᵇ
The best-preserved copy. Column ii holds the assembly, Hahyah’s garden, Ohyah’s throne, the fear, and the sending of Mahaway. Without this manuscript the book is a pile of names.
- Siglum
- 4Q530
- Findspot
- Cave 4, Qumran
- Copy dated
- First century BCE, paleographically
- Cited
- 4Q530 (EnGiantsᵇ); ed. Puech, DJD 31
Cave 4 yielded the majority of the reconstructable narrative. 4Q530’s second column (joined with overlapping fragments) is the reason Ohyah, Hahyah, Mahaway, and Gilgamesh can be placed in one room. It names the gathering a knushta and the comrades Nephilin. It is a court scene that has not yet admitted it is a court.
The column runs: Ohyah reports Gilgamesh; both brothers dream; sleep flees; Hahyah’s garden; a failed interpretation; Ohyah’s throne; fear; Mahaway is called and sent to Enoch the noted scribe; a question about how long the giants have to live.
Nine or ten Aramaic copies of this work were found at Qumran — more than of most biblical books, more than of any single section of 1 Enoch. The camp at the Dead Sea kept the children’s book as carefully as the fathers’.