Communications of the ACM
Modern Technology nlocks Secrets of a Damaged Biblical Scroll
Experts in the Dead Sea Scrolls Project at the Israel Antiquities Authority are using a technology developed at the University of Kentucky to examine an ancient scroll previously thought too fragile to read.
Credit: Seales et al.
Biblical scholars in Israel used technology developed by University of Kentucky computer scientists to examine an ancient charred scroll virtually with a digital model.
Experts in the Dead Sea Scrolls Project at the Israel Antiquities Authority say this new technique could enable them to digitally unroll and accurately read other ancient scrolls that are too damaged to risk opening physically.
The software programs that made this breakthrough possible have been developed over the last 13 years by University of Kentucky professor W. Brent Seales. He says his Volume Cartography suite uses a "virtual unwrapping" method to model a scroll's surface as a mesh of small triangles. Each triangle can be resized until the modeled surface makes the best fit to the internal structure of the scroll, as revealed by computed tomography scanning. Ink blobs are assigned to their proper place on the structure, and the computer then unfolds the three-dimensional structure into a two-dimensional sheet.
Seales says he will open source the software suite once his current government grant concludes.
From The New York Times
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