Dead Sea Scrolls Published Online

Five of the two millennia-old Dead Sea Scrolls were published online this week, in a joint project by the Israel Museum and Google.

The Scrolls were discovered in 1947, and represent fragments of the Old Testament and other Biblical texts. Owing to their delicate nature, access to the Scolls has typically required a trip to Jerusalem and a peek through a glass case in the Israel Museum. Until now.

Viewing them on the dedicated website is a delight, and offers the kind of proximity normally afforded only to archaeologists. High-resolution photographs were used to record the Scrolls, and they have been displayed in an intuitive interface that allows the user to browse freely around the document or zoom in to an incredible level of detail, picking out the tiniest rivets and blemishes on the animal skin parchment on which they were written.

The most impressive part, though, is reserved for the Great Isaiah Scroll, the most famous in the collection and the only one that is largely complete: hover the mouse over any section and an English translation is layered across the text.

Digitisation of the Scrolls began in 2008. Though only five have been published thus far, the project's leaders are aiming to have them all available by 2016. This being a Google project, the Scrolls are also indexed in the company's search engine.

The video below explains more about the project.