TAG | Digital pixs of Dead Sea Scrolls headed to Internet via NASA |
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| by William Atkins | |
| Monday, 01 September 2008 | |
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Page 2 of 2 The Scrolls are of important religious and historical significance because they include almost the only known copies of Biblical documents produced before the second century A.D. Pnina Shor, who is in charge of the IAA artifacts treatment and conservation department that is responsible for the conservation effort, states, “Now for the first time the scrolls will be a computer click away. This will ensure that the scrolls are preserved for another 2,000 years." [Associated Press: “Dead Sea Scrolls to be displayed on Internet”] Currently, only four curators are allowed to handle the Scrolls, and only a handful of scholars have been allowed to analyze them. They are kept in a carefully monitored vault within a small climate-controlled, light-controlled laboratory. A pilot project is underway that will determine how long it will take to digitize the 15,000 to 20,000 fragmented pieces of the Dead Sea Scrolls. The imaging equipment to be used on the project comes from the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, U.S.A. Greg Bearman, formerly with JPL, gained permission to use the equipment from NASA. He states, "I am an archaeology buff. This equipment is used to study planets. NASA uses the technology for imaging in space, and it works here." [AP] The project leaders hope to eventually provide the Dead Sea Scrolls on the Internet, along with translations, transcriptions, scholarly interpretations, and bibliographies. Shor states, "The aim is that you can go online and call up the scrolls with the best possible resolution and all the information that exists about them today.” [The Guardian: “From papyrus to the web: photographs of Dead Sea Scrolls to go online”]
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