Sixty five years after the surprise discovery of a Bedouin shepherd,
who had been looking for a lost goat, the Dead Sea scrolls can now be
studied all over the world thanks to an initiative launched by the
Israel Antiquities Authority and Google. After two years of work, a new website (www.deadseascrolls.org.il) was presented today, containing 5,000 high quality images of ancient biblical fragments dating back to two thousand years ago which remain in a miraculously good condition thanks to the region’s extremely dry climate.
The website shows thousands of images that remained unpublished until now, including digital visual archives specific to each historic period in which the texts were written.
The images, which are now available for the public to browse through, depict fragments of biblical texts (plus a section from the Genesis and the 10 commandments) amongst other things; texts which are linked to the origins of Christianity, and letters written by Jewish rebels who were hunted down by the Roman legions between 132-35 AD.
The original Dead Sea scrolls are kept in the Israel Museum in Jerusalem.