Mishor and Engel quickly established that the Ashkar fragment and the London Manuscript had indeed been part of the same Torah scroll, separated only by a column and a half of missing text. Both fragments are assumed to have come from the Cairo Geniza, a depository of ancient Jewish documents, including worn-out holy books, but that is not certain. Although most of the Geniza fragments were salvaged by Cambridge University in 1896, tens of thousands ended up in other collections and in private hands. Centuries after the original Torah scroll had been taken out of circulation, circumstance had brought these two fragments separately across the Atlantic within a few decades of each other – one from Beirut, the other from London. They were now being reunited in Jerusalem, at least in a temporary exhibit.Read it all.
Via Joseph I. Lauer's list. Background here.
