Sunday, July 01, 2007

THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS EXHIBITION IN SAN DIEGO opened on Friday:
About 1,800 visitors attend museum's exhibit of ancient fragments on first day
By Sandi Dolbee
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER

June 30, 2007

BALBOA PARK – Christine DeCoup's mind wandered as she looked at the leather fragments written by a biblical scribe more than 2,000 years ago.

Her younger sister, Katie, nodded her head. “That it would be all so famous,” she said.

“And a display in a museum,” added their mother, Linda.

After three years of planning, San Diego's first exhibition of the Dead Sea Scrolls opened yesterday to visitors from San Diego to Georgia, who pronounced it somewhere between “fascinating” and “fantastic.”

[...]
Visits have at about a little over half capacity so far. And here's a common reaction when someone first actually sees the Scrolls:
The DeCoup family – Christine, 21; Katie, 18; and Linda, 47, who came down from Orange County – admitted to being a little disappointed that the “scrolls” were not actually big, intact rolls of writings. Instead, what they saw often resembled a jigsaw puzzle with several pieces missing.

“It was still cool,” Katie said.
Indeed.

UPDATE: "Let there not be too much light."