An Early Leviticus Scroll from En-Gedi: Preliminary Publication

Abstract

The synagogue at En-Gedi was excavated in the 1970’s by a team led by the archaeologists Prof. Dan Barag and Prof. Ehud Netzer of the Institute of Archaeology of the Hebrew University and Dr. Yosef Porath of the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA). Among the material finds uncovered in the debris of the שדוקה ןורא (ark) were charred lumps of (a) scroll(s). Due to the poor physical condition of these chunks of charred material it is impossible to unroll them. They are therefore illegible to the human eye, and their content was unknown. Recently, Pnina Shor and Yosef Porath took the initiative to try to analyze the contents of the scroll with new imaging and scanning techniques that the IAA is using for the Dead Sea Scrolls. Shor arranged for the three-dimensional micro-CT scanning of the scroll by David Merkel of Merkel Technologies Ltd., and for the collaboration with Brent Seales of the Department of Computer Science at the University of Kentucky.1 At a press conference in the summer of 2015, the IAA announced that Seales and his research team had succeeded in generating readable images of sections from this scroll, using digital imaging software that they developed, which they applied to the high-resolution, cross-sectional scans of the scroll provided by Merkel.2 The micro-CT scans allow for the differentiation between the surface of the scroll and the ink, despite its current charred state.