Scholars need not touch ancient finds to study and store them, as computers take over the arduous task
COMPUTER science techniques are being
used to probe into the mysteries of
archaeological finds, most famous of
them being the Dead Sea scrolls, which
carry a surfeit of information about
many a biblical anecdote. A revolutionary discovery by scientists would now
make it possible for scholars to restore
and study old and highly damaged
acquisitions without touching them.
It is like formatting and working a
jigsaw puzzle on the computer. The
technique was first developed and
applied by Gregory Bearman, a physicist
and remote sensing specialist at
National Aeronautics and Space
Administration's Jet Propulsion Laboratory at Pasadena, California, us, to
comprehend previously illegible texts.
The method has been modified for
archaeological purposes by Bruce
Zuckermann, a scholar in Semitic languages at the School of Religion of the
University of California, Los Angeles, us.
Zuckermann and his colleague
Lundberg, Marilyn Hebrew Bible specialist
from the West Semitic
Research Project of the
University of Southern
California, us, started off
with an easy task. They
took three fragments, each
about the size of a postage
stamp, known to be parts
of the Dead Sea scrolls that
narrate the stories of
prophet Daniel and his
religious disagreements
with the Babylonian king
Nebuchadnezzar.
The pieces were first photographed with cameras sensitive to infra-red light. The
scrolls, brown with age, revealed faint
scripts under strong magnification. The
photographs were then scanned and
digitised. It was then relatively easy to
manipulate the images on the computer
screen, magnify and electronically scissor the images and float it right next to
the large parent manuscript. Often, half
a letter on the smaller pieces fitted
smugly with the other half on the manuscript and the researchers could then
figure out where exactly the smaller
piece was in the original parchment.
The missing parts were thus reconstructed on the computer. The scrolls
lay protected in their coverings and
were not touched even once. By
analysing the Aramaic script of the larger document, the scholars were also able
to reproduce missing pieces of letters on
the smaller fragments. Often, they
recognised half a letter and reconstructed the rest in a scribe's own peculiar
style by studying similar letters elsewhere in the text.
When Zuckermann and Lundberg
described the new technique and the
fight results of their tests at the Society of
Biblical Literature in Philadelphia this
January, many others were soon to
recognise the immense potential of the
unique method.
Apart from the Dead Sea scrolls,
parchments more than 2,000 years
"Qld reflecting on the social scenario
at the beginning of Christianity and
many other ancient manuscripts
and inscriptions are now being deciphered using the new process.
Zuckermann's team is busy reconstructing the Genesis Apocryphon, a scroll
which, according to experts, contains
invaluable information
about events just before
the Great Flood. Stephen
Kaufman, a scholar of
ancient middle eastern
languages from the
Hebrew Union College in
Cincinnati, Ohio, us, is
working to unravel
Phoenician inscriptions
on a stone monument
from the eighth century
BC.
Wayne Pitard, a specialist on ancient Syria at
the University of Illinois
at Urbana-Champaign, is
editing the digital versions of Ugaritic texts which provide a lot of
insight on the Canaanites - inhabitants
of the Mediterranean coast of northern
Syria in the 13th century BC.
Experts, however, opine that "it
would be very easy and even tempting"
to use electronic restoration to doctor
texts. The best guarantee, they say, to
counter fraud would be for scholars to
outline and detail each step they take to
reconstruct the text. All that notwithstanding, the digital manuscripts might
have more tales to tell!
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