Religious Tourism

Archaeologist Ahiad Ovadia digs carefully in cave 12 near Qumran. (Casey L. Olson and Oren Gutfeld, Hebrew University). Photo timesofisrael.com

The scrolls were discovered in the 1950s by archaeologists and Bedouin in caves near Qumran — on the West Bank near the Dead Sea — and include tens of thousands of parchment and papyrus fragments that are thought to belong to approximately 1,000 different manuscripts.

The Israel Antiquities Authority said examinations of some fragments that had not previously been sorted or deciphered due to their “small size and precarious physical state” uncovered new script and pointed to the existence of an unknown manuscript.

Photo: Shay Halevy, Israel Antiquities Authority

One of the Dead Sea Scroll fragments is examined at the Israel Antiquities Authority’s lab.Shai Halevi/The Leon Levy Dead Sea Scrolls Digital Library.

As part of a project to digitize the scrolls, researcher Oren Ableman examined a few dozen fragments and discovered “traces of ink on many fragments that appeared blank to the naked eye,” the authority said in a statement.

Before and after using NASA technology.Photo: Shay Halevy, Israel Antiquities Authority

One of those fragments could not be attributed to any known manuscripts, raising the possibility that it belongs to a still unknown text.

Other fragments have been identified as belonging to the Books of Deuteronomy, Leviticus and Jubilees.

One is from the Temple Scroll, while another has been identified as belonging to the Great Psalms Scroll.

The authority said the fragments “provide new insights” to researchers studying the scrolls.