A new European Research Council (ERC)-funded international research project has set out to find the answer some of the most asked questions about the famed Dead Sea Scrolls: Where did they come from, and what can these origins tell us about the transmission of knowledge in ancient Judea?

Further, it aims to place individual manuscripts and scribes within their geographical and chronological contexts while identifying centers of writing, learning, literary production, and knowledge transmission in ancient Judea—and potentially beyond.

The Dead Sea Scrolls, discovered in the Judean Desert by Bedouin shepherds in the 1950s, are one of the most significant archaeological discoveries of the twentieth century and include the earliest known manuscripts of the Tanach, as well as a collection of Jewish literary works dating to the late Second Temple period.

Despite decades of research, the precise locations where the scrolls were manufactured and copied remain unknown.

To answer these questions, the ERC has awarded a €2.5 million Advanced Grant to Professor Mladen Popović of the University of Groningen (Netherlands), one of the world's leading authorities on the Dead Sea Scrolls, for a five-year international research project.

Titled Tracing Scribes and Scrolls, the project will be a joint research effort among the University of Groningen, the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA), and several other leading European laboratories and institutions.

The project builds on Popović's previous ERC-funded project, named The Hands That Wrote the Bible, which pioneered the use of artificial intelligence to identify individual scribes responsible for copying the Dead Sea Scrolls. 

Tracing Scribes and Scrolls expands on this work by moving beyond identifying the scribes responsible for the work to learning where they operated, the materials they used, and the broader cultural and intellectual networks in which the manuscripts were circulated.

Research methods will include the study of approximately 250 samples of the scrolls, including parchment, papyrus, and ink, from the IAA’s collection using state-of-the-art chemical, artificial intelligence, paleographical (study of ancient handwriting), and codicological (study of manuscripts as cultural artifacts) analysis.

The scrolls’ chemical signatures - taken from Qumran and other sites in the Judean Desert - will then be compared to ancient Egyptian papyri, marking the first time such a research feat has been undertaken.

These analyses are expected to help researchers identify the scrolls’ material “fingerprints,” trace the sources of the raw materials used in their creation, identify production practices, and uncover connections between these origins and the various known centers of scribal activity in the region.

Other chemical data taken from the scrolls will then be processed using AI tools capable of identifying complex patterns that are difficult to detect with conventional analysis. 

These results will then be combined with paleographic studies of the handwriting in the scrolls, codicological analysis of their physical construction (including sheet preparation, column layout, margins, and stitching techniques), and linguistic and literary evidence.

"This is the largest research project to date to use artificial intelligence to investigate the cultural context of the Dead Sea Scrolls,” explained Popović. “These manuscripts provide an extraordinary window into the intellectual world of ancient Judea.”

“By combining advanced laboratory analysis with the study of ancient handwriting and the remarkable advances in artificial intelligence made in recent years, we are now able to address questions that were previously beyond our reach: who copied these manuscripts, where they were produced, how knowledge circulated, and the role these texts played within the society of their time."

Dr. Ilit Cohen-Ofri of the IAA, who is involved with the project, added that the upcoming research will create an “unprecedented” database of chemical composition of samples taken from the Dead Sea Scrolls. 

“The Israel Antiquities Authority is entrusted with the preservation, documentation, and study of the Dead Sea Scrolls, and we continue to invest significant effort in advancing their scientific investigation,” Cohen-Ofri said, adding that the IAA has only recently come to realize the wealth of information that the scrolls’ materials, such as parchment, papyrus, and ink, have to offer.

“Participating in an international project of this scale enables the Israel Antiquities Authority to contribute its expertise in material analysis of artifacts to some of the most important questions in Dead Sea Scrolls research, benefiting both the scholarly community and the broader public,” Cohen-Ofri said.

The project brings together a collection of international research teams, including those led by Dr. Ilit Cohen-Ofri at the Israel Antiquities Authority, Professor Mladen Popović and Dr. Maruf Dhali at the University of Groningen, Ilaria Degano at the University of Pisa, Leila Birolo at the University of Naples Federico II, Kaare Rasmussen and Frank Kjeldsen at the University of Southern Denmark in Odense. 

It will also include collaborations with the Egyptian Museums in Berlin and Turin, as well as KU Leuven in Belgium, as part of the comparative study of papyri from Egypt and the Judean Desert.