Section:GDN 1N PaGe:19 Edition Date:190907 Edition:01 Zone: Sent at 6/9/2019 17:25 cYanmaGentaYellowbl
Saturday 7 September 2019 The Guardian •
19Nicola DavisThe Dead Sea Scrolls have given up
fresh secrets, with researchers identi-
fying a previously unknown technique
used to prepare one of the collection’s
most remarkable manuscripts. They
say the study poses a puzzle as the salts
used on the writing layer of the Temple
Scroll are not common to the region.
“ It turns out to be quite unique,”
said Prof Admir Masic , co-author of
the research from the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology. “These salts
are not typical for anything we knew
about associated with this period and
parchment making .”
Found in the middle of the 20th cen-
tury but dating back to between the
third century BC and the fi rst century
AD, the Dead Sea Scrolls comprise cop-
ies of writings that form parts of the
Hebrew bible canon. Some sections
are fragments while others are intact.
The cloth-wrapped scrolls were
found by nomadic Bedouin shepherdshidden in jars in the Qumran caves of
the Judaean desert. Most of the writ-
ings are on parchment sheets – some
of which have been tanned, an east-
ern practice , while some are untanned
or lightly tanned, a western practice.
The Temple Scroll was reportedly
sold by the Bedouins to an antiques
dealer, who wrapped it in Cellophane
and stuck it in a shoebox under his
fl oor. It is now housed with many of
the other Dead Sea Scrolls in the Shrine
of the Book, part of the Israel Museum
in Jerusalem.
The scroll – more than eight metres
long and written on parchment sheets
whitened through treatment with a
salt called alum – has a number of unu-
sual features. It is wafer thin – experts
have suggested it may have been made
from an animal skin split in two – and
unlike most scrolls the writing is on
the fl esh side.
Even more surprisingly, the text is
written on a thick mineral-containing
layer that forms a surface on top of the
collagen. “The layer reminds [one] of
plaster on a wall,” said Dr Ira Rabin,
another author of the study.
In the journal Science Advances ,
Masic and colleagues report they have
analysed the makeup of this mineral-
containing layer. The results suggest
the writing surface is largely composed
of minerals that dissolve in water and
are left behind when the water evap-
orates. The researchers say these salts
are not typical of the region.Dead Sea Scroll
discovered in
a shoebox adds
to age-old puzzle
RELEASED BY "What's News" vk.com/wsnws TELEGRAM: t.me/whatsnws