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Women Battle to Bring Dead Sea Scrolls Back to Life

(AFP) Patrick Moser - Four women, all immigrants from the former Soviet Union, are charged with the conservation and restoration of the famed 2000-year-old Dead Sea Scrolls found half a century ago on the shores of the Dead Sea. Their job is to ensure the manuscripts on show are exhibited in ideal conditions and to restore the tens of thousands of fragments that suffered not only from the ravages of time but also from past conservation efforts. Day after day for the past 18 years, they have painstakingly removed adhesive tape that was used decades ago to join matching fragments. "Residues of tape penetrated the parchment and caused its disintegration," says Pnina Shor, who heads the Department of Artifacts Treatment and Conservation at the Israel Antiquities Authority. The conservators, working at a small lab at Jerusalem's Israel Museum, will need at least another 18 years to complete the job of restoring the fragments, says Shor. The fragments, considered one of the world's most important archaeological finds, make up about 900 documents of major religious and historical significance. The oldest of the documents dates to the third century BCE and the most recent to about 70 CE, when Roman troops destroyed the second Jewish Temple in Jerusalem.
2010-02-05 08:45:40
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