turn to charcoal when the tabernacle in which it was housed burn down around 1,500 years ago , the contents of the En - Gedi curl were think long lost to history . But in an astonishing novel evolution , investigator haveused a new techniqueto “ virtually unwrap ” the scroll and read what was first write in 100 CE .
Using CT scansnormally reserved for biological specimens , archaeologists in Israel first put the scroll into the machine on a bit of a whim , before sending the solvent over to calculator scientist Brent Seales at the University of Kentucky .
Seales took the scans of the curlicue layer by level , and then picked out the marks where the ink was used , followed by flatten each leafage and then run up them all together . By doing so , he was capable to give away the Hebrew script on the page , which was then read to reveal passages from the book of Leviticus , ca-ca it theearliest transcript ever foundof an Old Testament Bible scripture .
The curlicue was ab initio bring out in 1970 as archaeologist were excavating the remains of the En - Gedi tabernacle , thought to have been demolish when the town on the western shoring of the Dead Sea ( near the Qumran Caves that contained the famed Dead Sea scrolls ) was fire down in 600 CE .
What remained of the scroll was little more than a clod of charcoal , so fragile that it had hardly been affect since being found for fear of it disintegrate . Now , its secrets and historic importance have finally been revealed , as reported in the journalScience Advances .
“ We were amazed at the quality of the images,”saidMichael Segal , head of the School of Philosophy and Religions at Hebrew University of Jerusalem . “ Much of the schoolbook is as clear , or secretive to as readable as factual unscathed Dead Sea Scrolls or high resolve photographs of them . ”
The scroll contains 35 lines of text ; out of these , 18 were preserved , with the other 17 being reconstructed . The ancient Hebrew in which it was write contained only consonant , as vowel were yet to be developed .
What is most striking about the text , however , is that it is selfsame to knightly written material of Leviticus . “ We were immediately hit by the fact that in these transit , the En - Gedi Leviticus scroll is identical in all of its detail both regarding its letter and section division to what we call the Masoretic text , the authoritative Jewish textual matter until today , ” suppose Segal . This intend that in over 2,000 class , fabulously , the passage have not changed one bit .
To facilitate out archaeologist hoping the new technique could be used to read other damaged ancient roll , the investigator plan on produce the suit of software program , called Volume Cartography , open access . “ We are releasing all our datum for the scroll from En - Gedi : the scan , our geometrical analysis , the final texture,”saidSeales . “ We call up that the scholarly community will have interest in the data and the process as well as our results . ”
This will be of heavy interest to other researchers keen to unwrap other ancient scroll that are also sunburn or simply too delicate to unroll . Top of the list will be the 300 Roman roll unearthed in a library from Herculaneum , destroyed when Vesuvius erupted 2,000 years ago .
