Researchers have revealed the hidden contents of a fragile and damaged biblical scroll, thanks to computer scanning and imaging techniques.
The En-Gedi scroll dates back to at least the fourth century AD — the oldest Hebrew scroll found, other than the Dead Sea Scrolls — and cannot be unrolled without causing further damage. William Seales at the University of Kentucky in Lexington and his colleagues used X-rays to scan the scroll, and developed software, called “virtual unwrapping”, to digitally reconstruct the 'pages' and words of the ancient artefact (pictured). They found that the ink-based text, discovered in 1970, contains fragments of the Book of Leviticus.
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Ancient scroll virtually unrolled. Nature 537, 589 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/537589e
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/537589e