More than a million people have visited a new website featuring high-resolution photographs of several Dead Sea Scrolls since the site was launched less than a week ago by the Israel Museum and Google Israel.
Pictured: Photographer Yair Medina, left, showing Pnina Shor, curator and head of Dead Sea Scrolls Project at the Israel Antiquities Authority, scanned fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls on a computer screen. (Photo by: AP)
The website provides a detailed view of five of the most complete scrolls, which were found at Qumran and date from around the Second Temple period, nearly 2,000 years ago.
Among the scrolls featured on the website is the Book of Isaiah.
The actual scrolls are part of the Israel Museum’s “Shrine of the Book” collection in Jerusalem.
An analysis of the visitors to the site, which can be accessed directly at dss.collections.imj.org.il or through the museum’s general website, reveals broad interest from almost every country on earth, including Iraq, Iran, Pakistan and Syria.
While the museum had anticipated wide interest in the website, interest has exceeded expectations. Between last Monday, when the website was launched, and Sunday morning, Google logged 1,042,104 visitors to the site, which not only provides an opportunity to see detailed images of the five scrolls, but also features an English translation.
The scrolls were photographed in the museum vault where they are kept using a special camera with a flash that does not cause damage during the photography process.
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Source: Nir Hasson, Haaretz
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