Charred Leviticus scroll deciphered

TECHNOLOGY WATCH: Seales' Research Team Reveals Biblical Text From Damaged Scroll (Whitney Harder, University of Kentucky News).

LEXINGTON, Ky. (July 20, 2015) — For the first time, advanced technologies made it possible to read parts of a scroll that is at least 1,500 years old, which was excavated in 1970 but at some point earlier had been badly burned. The scroll was discovered inside the Holy Ark of the synagogue at Ein Gedi in Israel. High-resolution scanning and University of Kentucky Professor Brent Seales' revolutionary virtual unwrapping tool revealed verses from the beginning of the Book of Leviticus suddenly coming back to life.

On Monday the rare find was presented at a press conference in Jerusalem, attended by Israel's Minister of Culture and Sports, MK Miri Regev, and the director of the Israel Antiquities Authority, Israel Hasson. Seales attended via Skype.

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The Ein Gedi scroll was scanned with a micro-computed tomography machine from Skyscan (Bruker). Data from the scan is the sole basis of Seales' software analysis. The scanning process is x-ray-based and completely non-invasive as the Ein Gedi scroll is badly damaged from fire and cannot be physically opened. The scans were done in Israel with assistance from Merkel Technologies Company, Ltd. Israel and Pnina Shor, curator and director of IAA’s Dead Sea Scrolls Projects, provided the data to Seales for analysis. Results were produced non-invasively from scan data alone – the Ein Gedi scroll itself remains intact and unopened.

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HT reader Yehoshua Rabinowitz, who just sent in the link. And now I see from Joseph I. Lauer's list that the Israel Antiquities Authority has also circulated a press release in Hebrew and English. But so far only the Hebrew one has been posted online. You can read it here.

This is an early example of the sort of non-destructive and non-invasive scanning technology that I keep going on about (e.g., here, here, and here, and links). And PaleoJudaica has been following the work of Professor Seales for some time. See here and here and links. We live in exciting times!

Bit by bit, a letter at a time, whatever it takes. Until we're done.

UPDATE (21 July): Joseph Lauer has e-mailed the links to the IAA press release. The English is here and the Hebrew is here.