The Dead Sea manuscripts or the scrolls of Qumran are famous. The first were found in 1946 Bedouin herders. Some contain the oldest known evidence of biblical texts. Thousands of fragments were found and some were empty … or so it seemed. Previously: Researchers found hidden text in Dead Sea manuscripts that they thought were empty.
There are four fragments of Dead Sea Scroll manuscripts. You are in the John Rylands Library at the University of Manchester. This makes the university unique in the UK. No other has authenticated text fragments from the Dead Sea manuscripts.
Donated manuscripts
The study was conducted as part of a study funded by Leverhulme at King’s College London. All of these pieces were discovered during the official excavations of the Qumran caves. In the 1950s, the Jordanian government donated the fragments to Ronald Reed, a leather expert at the University of Leeds. I wanted to examine its physical and chemical composition. The pieces should be ideal for scientific tests. They were empty and relatively useless.
In 1997 they were donated to the University of Manchester. Joan Taylor, a researcher at King’s College London, recently examined her. He discovered that it was possible for one of them to contain a letter. He decided to photograph any fragments of more than 1 cm that appear white to the naked eye. He used multispectral images.
Four of them have readable Hebrew / Aramaic text in carbon-based ink. The study also revealed line lines and small traces of letters in other fragments.
Revelation about the "Shabbat"
The most extensive fragment contains the remains of four lines of text with 15-16 letters, most of which are only partially preserved. The word Shabbat (Saturday) can be read clearly. This text may be related to the biblical book Ezekiel (46: 1-3).
"When I looked at one of the fragments with a magnifying glass, I thought I had seen a Hebrew letter that & # 39; L & # 39;" said Professor Taylor in a statement. All of these fragments should be empty. I thought you could imagine things. But then it seemed that maybe other fragments could have very faded letters ».
«We have new techniques to reveal old texts. I felt we needed to know if these letters could be exposed. There are only a few in each fragment. They are like missing pieces of a puzzle that you find under a sofa. "
The text hidden in the Dead Sea manuscripts will be the subject of further investigation. Words lost in time can reveal new surprises.
