Monday, June 16, 2003

ISAIAH SCROLL ON DISPLAY IN MONTREAL:

Montreal museum to exhibit pieces of never-displayed Dead Sea Scrolls
(Buffalo News via Archaeologica News)
By INGRID PERITZ
Toronto Globe and Mail
6/15/2003
MONTREAL - With its tattered and darkened edges, the animal skin covered in indecipherable writing hardly looks like one of the most spectacular archaeological discoveries of modern times.

Yet museum workers donned white gloves and spoke in reverential tones last week as they unveiled the centerpiece of an exhibit that opens in Montreal this week: pieces of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Offering a brief glimpse, officials from Montreal's Pointe-a-Calliere museum and the Israel Museum in Jerusalem literally lifted the lid on a section of the Isaiah scroll, one of the original seven scrolls discovered in a cave near the Dead Sea in 1947.

Deemed too fragile, it has never before been exhibited anywhere, including Israel. "It's one of the most important" of the Dead Sea Scrolls, said Michal Dayagi-Mendels, senior curator of archaeology of the Israel Museum.

[...]


It appears that three more of the original seven scrolls from Cave One are on display as well, but the article doesn't say which three.

UPDATE: Carla Sulzbach (McGill University) writes:

In reference to your posting on the DSS exhibit in Montreal I would like to add to following, from the press release of the museum:

"The portions of three scrolls that will be presented in Canada come from the first group of scrolls discovered in 1947. They are among the most symbolic manuscripts in this incomparable collection: the War of the Sons of Light with the Sons of Darkness (War Scroll), the Community Rule and Isaiah B. This is the first time that the War Scroll and the Isaiah scroll will leave Israel. The Community Rule scroll has not left Israel since 1954, when it was purchased from an American collector."

Also on display are the presumably First Temple [inscribed ivory] pomegranate as well as the Tel Dan stele. The exhibit runs from June 17 to Nov 2, 2003 after which it will move to Ottawa.

For more info please go to the museum's website and follow the links.

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