FORTEAN FOLLOW-UPS

In contrast to the US Museum of the Bible’s dismay that 16 Dead Sea Scrolls fragments purchased at great expense are fakes, study of the genuine scrolls continues to yield new secrets. In the 1950s, a collection of fragments from the original Qumran discovery were given by the Jordanian government to Ronald Reed, a leather and parchment expert then at the University of Leeds. There is no doubt as to their authenticity since they are known to have been found during the official Qumran caves excavations in the 1940s and 1950s and were never channelled through the antiquities market.

At the time of the gift, these fragments were thought to be blank, and after analysis of their physical and chemical composition, they were donated to the University of Manchester’s John (the Hebrew letter ‘L’) on one of the ‘blank’ fragments, she then selected all fragments larger than 0.4 inches (1cm); a total of 51 pieces.