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Elizabeth Cheung

A copy of the largest of the Dead Sea Scrolls, some of the oldest and most significant texts ever discovered, will go on display in Hong Kong next week, alongside the Gabriel Revelation Stone.
The exhibition, "Temple, Scrolls and Divine Messengers: Archaeology of the Land of Israel in Roman Times", runs from Tuesday to January 25 at the Asia Society in Admiralty.
The society's executive director, Alice Mong, said the exhibition offered insight into the beliefs and daily lives of people who some say lived in the time of Jesus. "It is the first time for us to have this show, and the items have never been exhibited in Hong Kong and China before," Mong said.
The Great Scroll of Isaiah, at 734cm long, is the largest and most complete of the seven Dead Sea Scrolls which were discovered in caves near Israel's West Bank, on the Dead Sea, in 1947.

The scroll, written in Hebrew, contains the entire 66 chapters of the Book of Isaiah. It is unclear who the author was, but most scholars agree that it was written by the Essenes, a strict Jewish sect who left Jerusalem for the desert.
Dating from between 120BC and 100BC, the scroll is considered to be one of the oldest. "The Great Isaiah Scroll conveys the importance of the prophet Isaiah in Jewish belief and is 1,000 years older than the oldest manuscripts in the Hebrew Bible," said Dr Adolfo Roitman, an Israeli expert on the scrolls.
While the original scroll is kept in a temperature-controlled room in the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, a copy will be displayed in Hong Kong. The facsimile comprises high-definition images which are part of a digital preservation project that began in 2007. A digital library of scroll images has been set up online to provide free access.
Before they were discovered by a young Bedouin shepherd in 1947, the scrolls had been kept in the hot and dry caves of the Judaean Desert for over 2000 years.
Since then, more than 100,000 manuscript fragments have been found. They are mostly made of animal skin with some in papyrus, written mainly in Hebrew and Aramaic, which is still used among several Christian communities today in West Asia.
A pottery scroll jar that contained the original manuscripts will also be displayed. The jars were originally used to store food by ordinary families in the Qumran, a religious community 35km east of Jerusalem. "The people hid the scrolls in the jars to save them from the invasion of Romans, therefore the Dead Sea Scrolls are known as 'the hidden scrolls' too," Roitman said.
The Gabriel Revelation Stone, often called the "stone scroll", is also considered a highly significant artefact. Discovered in 2000 on the eastern shores of the Dead Sea, the limestone tablet dates from about 1BC to 1AD, and proclaims a vision on how God protected Jerusalem from an attack.
 


Hong Kong to get a glimpse of largest of the historic Dead Sea Scrolls

Dr Adolfo Roitman with the Great Scroll of Isaiah. Photo: Nora Tam 

Dr Adolfo Roitman with the Scroll Jar. Photo: Nora Tam

News

Hong Kong

It may not be an original but a display copy of the Great Scroll of Isaiah is the next best thing


A copy of the largest of the Dead Sea Scrolls, some of the oldest and most significant texts ever discovered, will go on display in Hong Kong next week, alongside the Gabriel Revelation Stone.
