Dead Sea Scrolls: AI reveals the 2,000-year-old texts were likely written by multiple scribes

The Dead Sea Scrolls were most likely penned by multiple scribes who mirrored one another's writing styles 2,000 years ago, AI-powered analysis has revealed. First found in 1946 in the Qumran Caves of the Judaean Desert, near the Dead Sea, the scrolls comprise some 972 ancient manuscripts in thousands of fragments. The texts were mainly written on animal skins and include parts of the Hebrew Bible as well as an assortment of extra-biblical documents. Little, however, had been known about the scribe or scribes who laboured to produce individual scrolls -- as the works were not signed. And examination by eye of the features of characters written on the scrolls typically leads to subjective and therefore often contentious conclusions.