En-Gedi Scroll CT Scan Reading Technology

In 2015, a team led by Professor W. Brent Seales at the University of Kentucky achieved a breakthrough in reading ancient manuscripts too damaged to physically open. Using X-ray micro-computed tomography (micro-CT scanning), they digitally "unwrapped" a severely charred scroll from the Ein Gedi synagogue in Israel that had been reduced to a lump of charcoal by a fire in the 6th century CE. The process involved scanning the scroll at extremely high resolution, using computer algorithms to identify layers of the rolled parchment, digitally separating and flattening those layers, and then reading the ink traces on the virtual surface. The results, published in Science Advances in September 2016, revealed 35 lines of Hebrew text from Leviticus 1:1-2:11, matching the medieval Masoretic Text exactly in its consonantal form and paragraph divisions. This was the first time a scroll too damaged to physically open was read entirely through non-invasive digital technology. The technique has since been applied to other damaged scrolls and has implications for reading the hundreds of still-unopened Dead Sea Scroll fragments and the carbonized scrolls from Herculaneum buried by Vesuvius.