Scrolls of the Dead Sea continue to speak

Daily Prayers with Decomposing Corpses: Death Chairs at Aragonese Castle

The Aragonese Castle is a castle built on top of a rocky islet next to Ischia, a small Italian island on the northern end of the Gulf of Naples. Whilst a stronghold is said to have already been built during Classical times, much of the present structure dates to the Middle Ages. The Aragonese Castle…

May 28, 2024940Views

Christians Supplied Medieval Pagans with Horses for Sacrifice for Funeral Rituals

In the late medieval period, pagans in the Baltic region of northern Europe imported horses from neighboring Christian nations for use in funeral rituals, according to a study. Horse sacrifices were highly visible and symbolic public rites across pagan prehistoric Europe, persisting the latest among the Baltic tribes, up to the 14th century AD. Offering pits might…

May 23, 2024642Views

Most visited pilgrims sites in the world

Pilgrimage has been a significant part of human civilization, binding cultures, religions, and races across continents. It's a spiritual voyage that millions undertake each year, seeking solace, answers, or simply an intimate encounter with their faith. What are the pilgrimage destinations you must visit, and why are these places so revered? River Ganges Photo…

May 21, 2024966Views

Archaeologist Ahiad Ovadia digs carefully in cave 12 near Qumran. (Casey L. Olson and Oren Gutfeld, Hebrew University). Photo timesofisrael.com

Technology originally developed for NASA has revealed letters invisible to the naked eye on fragments of the 2,000-year-old Dead Sea Scrolls, officials announced Tuesday, reported NBC news.

The scrolls were discovered in the 1950s by archaeologists and Bedouin in caves near Qumran — on the West Bank near the Dead Sea — and include tens of thousands of parchment and papyrus fragments that are thought to belong to approximately 1,000 different manuscripts.

The Israel Antiquities Authority said examinations of some fragments that had not previously been sorted or deciphered due to their “small size and precarious physical state” uncovered new script and pointed to the existence of an unknown manuscript.

Photo: Shay Halevy, Israel Antiquities Authority

One of the Dead Sea Scroll fragments is examined at the Israel Antiquities Authority’s lab.Shai Halevi/The Leon Levy Dead Sea Scrolls Digital Library.

As part of a project to digitize the scrolls, researcher Oren Ableman examined a few dozen fragments and discovered “traces of ink on many fragments that appeared blank to the naked eye,” the authority said in a statement.

Before and after using NASA technology.Photo: Shay Halevy, Israel Antiquities Authority

One of those fragments could not be attributed to any known manuscripts, raising the possibility that it belongs to a still unknown text.

Other fragments have been identified as belonging to the Books of Deuteronomy, Leviticus and Jubilees.

One is from the Temple Scroll, while another has been identified as belonging to the Great Psalms Scroll.

The authority said the fragments “provide new insights” to researchers studying the scrolls.

The study was presented Tuesday at the Israel Museum at the 70th International Conference of the Dead Sea Scrolls in the Desert of Penon Derech, in cooperation with the Orion Center for the Study of the Dead Sea Scrolls at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. – York.

Religious Tourism

Daily Prayers with Decomposing Corpses: Death Chairs at Aragonese Castle

Christians Supplied Medieval Pagans with Horses for Sacrifice for Funeral Rituals

Most visited pilgrims sites in the world