Writing Discovered on 'Blank' Dead Sea Scroll Fragments

In the 1950s, Dead Sea Scroll fragments thought to be blank were given to a British leather expert so he could study their chemical composition. Almost 70 years later, a professor has discovered they had writing on them all along. King's College London professor Joan Taylor says she spotted a small, extremely faded letter while examining one fragment with a magnifying glass, CBS reports. "Frankly, since all these fragments were supposed to be blank and had even been cut into for leather studies, I also thought I might be imagining things," she says. "But then it seemed maybe other fragments could have very faded letters too."

Taylor and colleagues taking part in a study at the University of Manchester—where the fragments had been kept in a box, largely untouched since they were donated to the institution—used multispectral imaging to determine that four of the 51 fragments had readable Hebrew/Aramaic text, the university said in a press release. "There are only a few on each fragment, but they are like missing pieces of a jigsaw puzzle you find under a sofa," Taylor says. The most substantial fragment had 15 to 16 letters, including the word Shabbat, or Sabbath, which researchers believe is related to the Book of Ezekiel.