Jewish Tribune - Dead Sea Scrolls go digital – carefully
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| Written by Avraham Zuroff | |
| Tuesday, 04 October 2011 | |
JERUSALEM – The steel door to the underground vault is open. Access to the area requires at least three different keys, a magnetic card and a secret code. A security guard permits only seven people to enter at a time into the climate-controlled room. A stack of shelves contains what its curator calls the Jewish people’s most valuable treasure ever discovered. “Welcome to the Holy of Holies,” Dr. Adolfo D. Roitman, the curator of the Israel Museum’s Dead Sea Scrolls greets us. The entire Isaiah scroll is displayed unfurled on a wooden slab. The Great Isaiah Scroll, inscribed with the Book of Isaiah and dating from about 125 BCE, is the only complete ancient copy of any biblical book in existence.Dating from the 3rd century BCE to the 1st century CE, the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered between 1947 and 1956 in 11 caves on the northwestern shores of the Dead Sea. The manuscripts are generally attributed to an isolated Jewish sect, referred to in the scrolls as “the Community,” who settled in Qumran in the Judean desert. Dr. Roitman points to verses that Jews throughout the world recite from the Haftarah on Yom Kippur. “You should be excited to see in Jerusalem what was written 2,000 years ago, not long after Isaiah himself recorded these words,” he said, unable to contain his enthusiasm. Dr. Roitman explains that in times of war the Israel Museum’s seven scrolls have been evacuated. But James Synder, who became Israel Museum’s director in 1997, said that if a war were to break out during his tenure, the scrolls would stay put. “They’re in greater danger if they are moved,” he said, “The scrolls would be in better shape rolled up in their jars in the dark, dry and cold conditions of the Qumran caves. But then no one would see them. It’s a tradeoff between preservation and accessibility.” Although I was in the last group of journalists and museum staffers to view the actual Isaiah scroll this Jewish year, anyone can “virtually” view the scroll with an Internet browser. Last week, the Israel Museum launched its Dead Sea Scrolls Digital Project, allowing users to examine and explore these ancient manuscripts from Second Temple times at a level of detail never before possible. Developed in partnership with Google, the new website gives users access to searchable, fast-loading, high-resolution images of the scrolls, as well as short explanatory videos and background information on the texts and their history. The Dead Sea Scrolls, which include the oldest known biblical manuscripts in existence, offer critical insight into Jewish society in the Land of Israel during the Second Temple period. Five complete scrolls from the Israel Museum have been digitized for the project at this stage and are accessible online at dss.collections.imj.org.il. The scrolls that have been digitized thus far include the Great Isaiah Scroll, the Community Rule Scroll, the Commentary on Habakkuk Scroll, the Temple Scroll, and the War Scroll. With a search engine, you can browse directly to the online scrolls. You can even magnify any of the five scrolls to examine texts in exacting detail. Photographer Ardon Bar-Hama made details invisible to the naked eye visible through shooting ultra-high resolution photos at up to 1,200 megapixels each. Bar Hama takes pride that he used camera equipment produced by Leaf, an Israeli company. The $50,000 in camera equipment shoots images almost 200 times higher in resolution than those produced by a standard camera. Each picture used UV-protected flash tubes with an exposure of 1/4000th of a second to minimize damage to the fragile manuscripts. You can search the Great Isaiah Scroll by column, chapter, and verse, or English translation. There is even an option for users to submit translations of verses in their own languages. “The Dead Sea Scrolls Project with the Israel Museum enriches and preserves an important part of world heritage by making it accessible to all on the Internet,” said Professor Yossi Matias, managing director of Google’s R&D centre in Israel. “Having been involved in similar projects in the past, including the Google Art Project, Yad Vashem Holocaust Collection and the Prado Museum in Madrid, we have seen how people around the world can enhance their knowledge and understanding of key historical events by accessing documents and collections online. We hope to make all existing knowledge in historical archives and collections available to all, including helping to put additional Dead Sea Scroll documents online.” Google is also working with the Israel Antiquities Authority to make tens of thousands of fragments from 900 Dead Sea manuscripts available online. The project is set to be complete by 2016. | |
| Last Updated ( Tuesday, 04 October 2011 ) |
