Wednesday, August 27, 2008

dead sea scrolls

When I was growing up, my mother had a small selection of books displayed between decorative bookends on her coffee table -- a set of 4 art history overview volumes with high quality color reproductions on glossy paper, and a book on the Dead Sea Scrolls. I was fascinated by the volume on ancient art and the book on the scrolls because of their sheer antiquity. I don't remember there being many illustrations in the book, but the story of the discovery of the scrolls was a very engaging one. I don't remember every asking my Mom why she that volume on display, or, if I did, what her answer was.

The New York Times today reports on the project to digitize the Scrolls. It's interesting to read that they plan to create new digital images, as well as digitizing the infrared images created of the scrolls in the 1950s.

Tangentially, there was an article in The Australian a couple of week ago about the conservation and multi-spectral imaging of scrolls from the Villa dei Papyri at Herculaneum.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

This field never ceases to generate controversy. Museum exhibits have been abusively slanted towards an increasingly disputed theory, and plagiarism charges have surfaced against Lawrence Schiffman, author of the popular "Reclaiming the Dead Sea Scrolls." See

http://www.nowpublic.com/world/plagiarism-and-dead-sea-scrolls-did-nyu-department-chairman-pilfer-chicago-historian-s-work