Google makes the Dead Sea Scrolls accessible to all

For decades, scholars have debated the validity and inspiration behind what many consider the biggest archeological discovery of the 20th century. To see the Dead Sea Scrolls, one had to travel to Israel. Now, they’re available to everyone through the internet thanks to Google in a project managed by The Israel Museum, Jerusalem.

The 2000-year-old collection of 972 Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek texts were discovered in bits and pieces between 1947 and 1956. They were put together over the decades and preserved in Israel, but digital records have been limited until now.

Google technology took 1200 megapixel photographs of the entire 5-scroll set and created an interface that would allow users to zoom in, isolate individual passages, and translate them into English. The text is indexed in Google, meaning that one can look any of the text up through search.

Here’s the introduction video to the project: