The Dead Sea scrolls, containing some of the oldest-known surviving Biblical texts, are to go online as part of a cooperation project between Israeli Antiquities Authority (IAA) and the internet giant Google, the French news agency AFP reports. The US$ 3.5 million project by the IAA and Google’s Israeli branch aims to produce the clearest renderings yet of the ancient scrolls and make them available free of charge to the public. "This is the most important discovery of the 20th century, and we will be sharing it with the most advanced technology of the next century," IAA project director Pnina Shor told reporters in Jerusalem.
The Dead Sea Scrolls are a collection of 972 documents, including texts from the Hebrew Bible, discovered between 1946 and 1956 in eleven caves in and around the ruins of the ancient settlement of Khirbet Qumran on the northwestern shore of the Dead Sea. The texts are of great significance as they include the oldest known surviving copies of Biblical and extra-Biblical documents, including the oldest surviving copy of the Ten Commandments. They are written in Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek, mostly on parchment, but with some written on papyrus. The Dead Sea scrolls are on display at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem.
The IAA will begin by using multi-spectral imaging technology developed by the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration to produce high-resolution images of the sometimes-faded texts that may reveal new letters and words. They will then partner with Google to place the images online in a searchable database complemented by translation and other scholarly tools. "Imagine a world where everybody with an internet connection is able to access the most important works of human history," Google's Israel R&D director Yossi Mattias said at the same press conference. He said the project would build on similar efforts by Google to put the public domain material of several European libraries online.
