The Dead Sea scrolls will now be accessible for public viewing, and you don’t even need to leave your home to see them.
Orchestrated under the Israel Antiques Authority (IAA) with support from Google, the Leon Levy Dead Sea Scrolls Digital Library is a free, online archive comprised of thousands of high resolution fragments.
History, now, is literally brought to the homes of people everywhere, accessible by computer and smart phone.
As IAA General Director Shuka Dorfman says on the library’s website:
“We have succeeded in recruiting the best minds and technological means to preserve this unrivalled cultural heritage treasure which belongs to all of us, so that the public with a touch of the screen will be able to freely access history in its fullest glamour.”
The first of the scrolls was discovered in 1947 in the West Bank, in what is often called one of the most important archaeological finds in history, and certainly in the 20th century. Continue reading.
Source: HuffingtonPost
Image: Fragment from the Tobit scroll, an apocryphal text from Second Temple times. Shai Halevi, IAA