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Israeli archaeologists this week uncovered more fragments of the , ancient Hebrew manuscripts that are among the earliest known texts of the Jewish religion.

The 80 new pieces of the scrolls were found in the , close to the Dead Sea, along with a host of other historical finds including  "the world's oldest basket".

The fragment forms part of the Book of Minor Prophets, which details 12 messengers including Zechariah.

"These are the things you are to do: Speak the truth to one another, render true and perfect justice in your gates. And do not contrive evil against one another, and do not love perjury, because all those are things that I hate - declares the Lord," one part of the scroll reads, according to Haaretz.

These fragments match other parts of the Dead Sea Scrolls discovered decades before.

"These are new pieces of the puzzle and we can add them to our greater picture of the period and of the text," Oren Ableman of the Antiquities Authority’s Dead Sea Scrolls Unit told Reuters.

"Even though these pieces are small, they did give us some new information that we did not know before."



Archaeologists believe the fragments were hidden during the against Roman rule 1,900 years ago - in the same location that a group of skeletons were discovered thought to be of Jewish fighters.

Also unearthed were a 10,500-year-old basket, a 6,000-year-old mummified child skeleton, and a cache of ancient coins.

The Dead Sea Scrolls excited archaeologists and theologians alike when they were discovered in Qumran, Palestine in the 1940s and 1950s, while other fragments of the Twelve Minor Prophets texts were also tracked down in the cave in 1961.

The scrolls pre-date the Hebrew biblical texts giving historians a clearer insight into early Jewish history.

"Every little piece of information that we can add, we can understand a little bit better," Joe Uziel, head of Israel's antiquities authority's Dead Sea Scrolls Unit said according to AP.