DNA to reconstruct the Dead Sea Scrolls

September 23, 2022

The Dead Sea Scrolls, found between 1947 and 1956, have not yet revealed all of their secrets. A group of international researchers have proposed a new technique, based on DNA, to try to put the pieces of this great archaeological puzzle together.

Since their discovery in the 1940s and 1950s around the dead Sea, the great archaeological puzzle that fragments of the Dead Sea scrolls has still not been resolved. And for good reason, of the thousand manuscripts written 2,000 years ago, only pieces remain, 25,000 in total, some of which are only a few centimeters. Putting the pieces in order to understand the different stories carried by his manuscripts is a real challenge. Understanding the geographic and historical context of its design is just as important.

A team of scientists from around the world brings a new clue to decipher the enigma of the manuscripts from the Dead Sea. Through research DNA, they were able to determine the origin of several skins used 2,000 years ago to write the manuscripts. This study combining biology and history was published in Cell.

Deciphering the DNA of the scrolls

The manuscripts were discovered in eleven caves near the ruins of Qumran, in what is now the West Bank. But not all of them are from this part of the Dead Sea.

This is particularly the case for the reconstructed manuscript which contains a copy of the book of Jeremiah of the Old Testament. DNA analysis has shown that two pieces that appear to associate are actually made from the skin of different animals, sheep and cattle. However, according to the researchers, these two pieces cannot come from the same manuscript since cattle breeding was not possible in the desert of Judea.

" The fact that the scrolls (from the book of Jeremiah, editor's note) diverge verbatim and that they are also composed of a species different animal indicates they come from a different place ", explains Noam Mizrahi, researcher from Tel Aviv University who participated in the study.

Other fragments assembled to reconstruct a text were found in the same case. Thus, according to scientists, a scroll from the book of Isaiah does not come from the region of the ruins of Qumran. This research does not fully solve the mystery of the Dead Sea Scrolls since some fragments are so small that DNA analysis is impossible without destroying them.

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