SOME DEAD SEA SCROLLS are coming to Singapore:

Treasures from Vatican Museum on show in Singapore
By Joanne Leow, Channel NewsAsia

SINGAPORE : The Asian Civilisations Museum is bringing in the largest ever Asian exhibition of art and artifacts from the Vatican.

This will be the most expensive project the local museum has ever mounted, with insurance costing a six figure sum.


From paintings by masters like Raphael and rare relics from the beginnings of Christianity, 140 objects from the Vatican and local churches will be on show at the one-off, specially curated for Singapore exhibition.

[...]

One of the extraordinary highlights of this exhibition is two fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

They are over 2,000 years old, right from the origins of Christianity.

[...]

I didn't know that the Vatican owned any Dead Sea Scrolls. The article doesn't say which ones they are, and the link given for the exhibition website leads to an incomplete page. The exhibition runs from Saturday to October.

UPDATE (20 June): Stephen Goranson e-mails:

According to a reference by Stephen Pfann in the DSS microfiche book to DSS: A Personal Account 1977 p.47 (by Trever, not Allegro as given there?--my copy is at home), the Vatican paid for some fragments in October 1951. Perhaps these are the same, now delivered? (Or perhaps the Vatican borrowed fragments from the Studium Biblicum Franciscanum?) I don't yet know which fragments.

UPDATE (21 June): Reader Matthew Hamilton e-mails:

Regarding the DSS on display in Singapore:

1. I checked through my records and can't find any mention of DSS actually held in the Vatican collections.
2. The purchase by the Vatican in the 1950s was cancelled by the Jordanian government when they cancelled all the foreign institution purchases in 1956.
3. I emailed Paolo Vian of Dipartimento Manoscritti, Biblioteca Vaticana, who replied

"Le posso confermare che in Biblioteca Vaticana non vi sono frammenti di rotoli del Mar Morto. In passato si � svolta presso la Vaticana una mostra sull'argomento ma con l'uso di riproduzioni e, comunque, di oggetti non appartenenti alla Biblioteca."

If my understanding of the Italian is correct, this is confirmation that there are no DSS in the Vatican collections, and Paolo Vian doesn't say anything about the Singapore exhibition.
4. I was able to get into the website of the Asian Civilization Museum, the website of the Empress Palace, and 3 other websites referring to the exhibit, but no mention is made of the DSS - but as these websites only present in the most glowing terms the art aspects of what is being displayed, I'm not surprisd by the lack of mention of fragments of the DSS (absence of evidence is not evidence of absence)

There are a range of possibilities - Vian is wrong (very unlikely), the web article by Joanne Leow is wrong (very likely, most web articles on the DSS are wrong), the DSS are only copies, the DSS are from another collection, and probably other possibilities.

Sorry if this doesn't clarify the situation.

Interesting.

UPDATE (22 June): More on the g-Megillot list.

UPDATE (27 June): More from someone who visited the exhibit here.

UPDATE: (1 August): More here.