The charred Ein Gedi scroll, over 1,500 years old, was unable to be opened
Lexington, Ky. – A University of Kentucky engineering professors’s revolutionary “virtual unwrapping” software has made it possible for the first time to decipher pieces of scroll over 1,500 years old.
Excavated in 1970, but badly burned at some point, the scroll was discovered in the Holy Ark of they synagogue at Ein Gedi in Israel. High resolution scanning and a virtual unwrapping tool developed by UK professor Brent Seales revealed verses from the beginning of the Book of Leviticus.
On Monday the rare find was presented at a press conference in Jerusalem, attended by Israel’s Minister of Culture and Sports, MK Miri Regev, and the director of the Israel Antiquities Authority, Israel Hasson. Seales attended via Skype.
“The text revealed today from the Ein Gedi scroll was possible only because of the collaboration of many different people and technologies,” said Seales, who is professor and chair of the UK College of Engineering’s Department of Computer Science. “The last step of virtual unwrapping, done at the University of Kentucky through the hard work of a team of talented students, is especially satisfying because it has produced readable, identifiable, biblical text from a scroll thought to be beyond rescue.”
The parchment scroll was unearthed in 1970 in archaeological excavations in the synagogue at Ein Gedi, headed by the late Dan Barag and Sefi Porath. However, due to its charred condition, it was not possible to either preserve or decipher it.
The Ein Gedi scroll was scanned with a micro-computed tomography machine from Skyscan (Bruker). Data from the scan is the sole basis of Seales’ software analysis. The scanning process is x-ray-based and completely non-invasive as the Ein Gedi scroll is badly damaged from fire and cannot be physically opened. The scans were done in Israel with assistance from Merkel Technologies Company, Ltd. Israel and Pnina Shor, curator and director of IAA’s Dead Sea Scrolls Projects, provided the data to Seales for analysis. Results were produced non-invasively from scan data alone – the Ein Gedi scroll itself remains intact and unopened.
The results come from research and a software prototype designed to do “virtual unwrapping” of surfaces from within volumetric scans. This unwrapping process allows the visualization of evidence of writing on a surface from within a scanned volume. Because the surfaces of the object being scanned are not flat like a book – rather they are rolled up as a scroll – the visualization of the surface and the evidence of writing upon the surface is a complex process.
“I have been using the word ‘surface’ to refer to the page of biblical text we have revealed. But this is a term of geometry, not of precise position,” Seales said. “The page actually comes from a layer buried deep within the many wraps of the scroll body, and is possible to view it only through the remarkable results of our software, which implements the research idea of ‘virtual unwrapping.'”
Thus, the great surprise and excitement when the first eight verses of the Book of Leviticus suddenly became legible.
“Today we are recovering evidence of an important text — one that was thought to be beyond repair,” Seales said. “But more than that, we are delivering hope for revealing other lost texts, and a systematic, scientific blueprint for how to do it.”
To view a short video explaining virtual unwrapping, visit https://youtu.be/VG8oOMHCg74.
Add Comment