The special salty mineral coating found on the Dead Sea Temple Scroll may have been the reason why the ancient manuscript survived relatively well for 2,000 years.
A closer look at the Dead Sea Temple scroll reveals the unique salt coating of the ancient manuscript.
In addition to their unprecedented historical importance, the Dead Sea Scrolls are archaeological wonders. First discovered by a shepherd in the Qumran Caves in the Judean Desert in 1946, this mysterious collection of ancient manuscripts, including biblical texts, calendars, and astrological charts, has long thrilled scholars and made them wonder how they had survived so well for about 2,000 years.
While many of the 1,000 documents have deteriorated over time, some have indeed been found in astonishingly good condition, most notably one 25-foot item known as the Temple Scroll. Now, recent research has uncovered what scientists believe are the key to its preservation - and its eventual destruction.
According to Live Science, researchers recently studied the Temple Scroll using a variety of X-ray instruments and Raman spectroscopy (a technique used to determine the chemical composition of a substance using laser beams). The team discovered that the Temple Scroll parchment was created using techniques different from many other scrolls.
Upon examination of the Temple Scrolls, traces of a saline mineral solution were found that were found in only a few other previously studied scrolls. The coating contains a mixture of salts of sulfur, sodium, calcium and other elements. Given that salt has strong conservation properties, it is likely that this special salt coating was what saved the Temple Scroll from natural elements inside the desert cave where it was found.
But scientists are still confused: where did this salt mixture come from?
Even stranger is the fact that none of the components that make up the salt coating on the scroll can be found naturally in cavern floors or in the Dead Sea itself. According to study co-author Ira Rabin of the University of Hamburg, Germany, the mineral coating is consistent with the Western tradition of making parchment, in which documents on the animal's skin are not processed or slightly tanned. Since this method was not common in the region in which this document was found, this suggests that the parchment for the scroll was likely exported from somewhere else outside the Dead Sea region.
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“This study has far-reaching implications beyond the Dead Sea Scrolls,” Rabin said in a press release on the study published in Science Advances.
“For example, this shows that at the dawn of parchment production in the Middle East, several technologies were used, which is in stark contrast to the only technique used in the Middle Ages,” continued Rabin. "The study also shows how to identify the initial processing methods, thus providing historians and conservatives with a new set of analytical tools for classifying the Dead Sea Scrolls and other ancient parchments."
Understanding how this parchment was made is important so that researchers can better identify forgeries and use proper preservation methods to keep this ancient document from further deterioration.
SERGEYCHIK DARYA