I went to a Jesuit university and was required to take a certain number of credits in religious courses, so I looked over the catalogue and chose the most interesting and less mainstream options, like classes on Yoga and Buddhism. One of the classes I chose was about the history of the Old Testament from an archaeological perspective, which sounded very Indiana Jones and turned out to be quite interesting. The professor was an archaeologist and had dug at some of the sites we studied in the course. The only thing I remember from that class was the story how the Bedouin were shopping the scrolls before the location of the caves were exposed and the Western archaeologist (who couldn't immediately travel to the site and wanted to obtain the scrolls at any cost) offered to pay them per piece. This is very likely how many of the scrolls were torn into tiny pieces, as Bedouin were looking to maximize their payout. I didn't find any reference to this in the linked wiki and I certainly don't know how true the story is (IIRC this story wasn't in our official class texts either), but it's something to consider that we could have a more-intact set of scrolls today had it not been for a terrible decision made in haste.
It is extremely difficult to do archeology in many countries in the middle-east, even pre-war.
Turkey, for example refuses most requests for digs. It is generally understood that they don't want excessive religious historical context placed on their country as it doesn't mesh well with their current national identity.
Can you elaborate on Turkey being unwilling to conduct historical research on its soil?
Are you an archeologist/historian?
I ask because I'm generally interested in history. I've read speculations that the region called Anatolia has had a shift in 14th century in language/culture/etc.
It might have well been a mistranslation. Stating that you're so desperate to buy that you'll accept "the tiniest bits you can find" could sound like a reasonable thing to say to transmit urgency; then a translator approximates to "he will pay for every small piece" and you're screwed.
