3D 'unwrapping' tools let scientists read an ancient Hebrew scroll

New software tools have enabled scientists to read an ancient, damaged Hebrew scroll without ever unfurling the fragile, disintegrating parchment. The digitization techniques, known as "volume cartography," transformed what were the charred remains of the nearly 2,000-year-old En-Gedi scroll into legible columns of handwritten text from the book of Leviticus, according to a study published Wednesday in the journal Science Advances. "We are reading a real scroll that hasn't been read for millennia," said Brent Seales, who helped develop the cartography techniques and is a computer sciences professor at the University of Kentucky in Lexington. "Many people thought it was impossible to read," he told reporters on a press call on Tuesday. "My technical team and I, we never needed physical access to the scroll."