Thanks to Asaf Gayer for pointing out that there is another excellent photo of Muhammad ed-Dhib to add to the small group of photos of the alleged finders of the first scrolls that I discussed in an earlier post. This picture was probably taken in 1963 and appears in the Wadi ed-Daliyeh excavation volume (Muhammad ed Dhib is identified as the man on the left; the fellow on the right holding the bat is not identified by name):

Muhammad ed-Dhib was among the Bedouin who worked for the excavators, as Lapp describes in the summary of work undertaken in the caves at Wadi ed-Daliyeh in 1963:

“A word must be said about the unbelievable Ta‘amireh who worked for us. Their strength was amazing. They worked at least twice as hard as any workmen I have ever seen on any previous dig. From the first day we could see that their working code disgraced any slacker, and the lack of a foreman to curb their fiercely independent spirits was a distinct advantage. They scrambled up rocky slopes in less than two minutes like goats, when it took the best of us fifteen minutes of cautious climbing to do the same. There were no misgivings on the part of our best men when faced with the task of carrying out heavy pots a meter high and nearly as wide to the car five kilometers away. One of these was the famous Muhammed edh-Dhib Hassan, who began the search for manuscripts by throwing a stone into Qumran Cave I in 1947 (and thus contributed indirectly to the discovery of the Samaria Papyri).”

It is interesting that the finder of the first scrolls is identified as “Muhammed edh-Dhib Hassan.” This is also how Frank Cross identified him in his report, “The Discovery of the Samaria Papyri,” Biblical Archaeologist 26.4 (1963) 109-121, at 114, note 4. In The Untold Story of Qumran, Trever gave his name as “Muhammed Ahmed el-Hamed, whose nickname is ‘Edh-Dhib’.” Trever also followed up on Cross’s version version of the name: “As a result of the addition of ‘Hassan’ to Edh-Dhib’s name in reports from Jerusalem during 1963 (e.g., BA XXVl:4 [December, 1963], p. 114, n. 4), I asked Mr. Kiraz to check Muhammed’s identity card. On July 21, 1964, Kiraz visited him at his camp near el-‘Azariyeh (Bethany) and examined the card, which is numbered 5941/218342 and dated in Bethlehem on October 23, 1956. There his name is clearly given as transliterated here” (Trever, The Untold Story, p. 195, note 9).

If others are aware of additional photographs of Muhammad ed Dhib, I would be happy to learn about them!