The photographies allows for the reading

Dr. Trever, a keen amateur professional photographer, met with Mar Samuel on February 21, 1948, when he took pictures of the scrolls. The high quality of his photos frequently exceeded the visibility of the scrolls themselves over the years, as the ink of the texts quickly deteriorated right after they had been taken out from their own linen wrappings.

The scrolls were examined making use of a cyclotron at the University of California, Davis in which it was found that the black ink used was iron-gall ink. The red ink on the scrolls was cinnabar (HgS, mercury sulfide). In March, the 1948 Arab-Israeli War prompted the removal of the scrolls to Beirut, Lebanon with regard to safekeeping.

Early in September, 1948, Mar brought Professor Ovid R. Sellers, the new Director of ASOR, some extra scroll pieces which he acquired acquired. By the end of 1948, nearly a couple of years after their uncovering, scholars had yet to locate the actual cavern exactly where the fragments had been identified. With unrest in the country at this time, no large-scale search could be carried out. Retailers attempted to get the Syrians in order to help him locate the cave, but they required much more money than he could provide. Finally, Cavern 1 has been found, upon January 28, 1949, by a United Nations observer. The Dead Sea Scrolls went up for sale eventually, in an advertisement in the June 1, 1954 Wall Street Journal.

Figure 6: for sale