An ancient scroll that was crushed and burned in a blaze that engulfed an entire town more than 1,400 years ago has been digitally unfurled and identified as a copy of the book of Leviticus.
Researchers made the discovery after computer scientists used a ground-breaking procedure called "virtual unwrapping" to flatten out digital sheets of the carbonised document and read the Hebrew words originally inscribed on the parchment in AD300.
Based on 3D x-ray scans of the charred remains, the computer reconstruction reveals the ancient writing with such clarity that scholars have read entire verses of the work and found its place in the history of important biblical texts.
No more than a lump of disintegrating charcoal, the scroll is so fragile that it has barely been touched since it was discovered in 1970. It was found in the holy ark of a synagogue in En-Gedi, a town on the western shore of the Dead Sea that was destroyed by fire around AD600.
