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AI and materials analysis offer new insights into the Qumran scrolls – ZENIT
Giuseppe Caffulli
(ZENIT News – Asia News / Milan, 08.18.2026).- Where do the Dead Sea Scrolls really come from? It is one of the most fascinating questions that has accompanied research into the manuscripts found in the caves of Qumran for over seventy years. Were they all produced by the religious community that inhabited the Qumran settlement? Or did the so-called ‘Qumran library’ comprise texts copied in various parts of Judea and subsequently hidden in the caves during the wars against Rome?
In an attempt to answer this enigma, one of the most innovative international research projects ever dedicated to the Dead Sea Scrolls is now underway. It is the Tracing Scribes and Scrolls project, funded by the European Research Council (ERC) with a five-year grant of 2.5 million euros.
Led by Mladen Popović of the University of Groningen (one of the Netherlands’ leading universities), in collaboration with the Israel Antiquities Authority and various European research laboratories, the research aims to reconstruct the provenance of the manuscripts through an unprecedented combination of archaeometry, analytical chemistry, palaeography, codicology and artificial intelligence.
The main innovation is the creation of the first large-scale database of the Scrolls’ ‘chemical signature’. The study will focus not only on the words written on the parchments, but also on their material composition: the composition of the animal hides, collagen, residues from processing techniques, inks and organic substances preserved in the fragments. Each manuscript can thus be linked to a sort of ‘digital fingerprint’ capable of revealing connections with other scrolls and perhaps indicating common places of production.
The role of AI
An important role in the project has been entrusted to the University of Pisa, the initiative’s scientific partner, which will contribute its expertise in the study of ancient materials. Researchers from Pisa will carry out chemical analyses of the parchments and inks, using advanced and predominantly non-invasive techniques to preserve these extremely fragile documents whilst at the same time gaining new insights into their origins.
Artificial intelligence will be tasked with integrating thousands of different data points: handwriting characteristics, chemical analyses, archaeological information and comparisons between manuscripts. It will not replace the work of scholars, but will offer a tool capable of identifying connections that are difficult for the human eye to detect. If the results confirm expectations, the research could change the way we view the Dead Sea Scrolls: no longer merely texts to be read, but objects with their own ‘material biography’, capable of revealing who produced them, where they circulated and how they came to be found in the caves of Qumran.
The first Dead Sea Scrolls came to light in 1947, when some Bedouin shepherds from the Ta’amireh tribe entered a cave in the rocky cliffs of the Judean Desert, near Khirbet Qumran. There, the first seven scrolls were discovered, preserved in earthenware jars.
In the years that followed, between 1949 and 1956, explorations of the caves in the area brought to light fragments belonging to some 950 different manuscripts, spread across a dozen caves.
This marked the beginning of what would come to be described as one of the most important archaeological discoveries of the 20th century. The texts, dating roughly from the 3rd century BC to the 1st century AD, are written mainly in Hebrew, but also in Aramaic and Greek. They include copies of biblical books, apocryphal texts, commentaries, community rules, liturgical compositions, wisdom literature and documents relating to the religious life of the time. They are particularly valuable because they include the oldest known manuscripts of numerous books of the Bible and provide a close-up view of the pluralism within Judaism during the Second Temple period.
The Qumran scriptorium
Today, the manuscripts and the more than 25,000 fragments in the collection are largely housed and studied by the Israel Antiquities Authority in Jerusalem. Some of the most famous scrolls, however, are on display at the Shrine of the Book, at the Israel Museum: these include the Great Isaiah Scroll, the War Scroll, the Community Rule Scroll and the Commentary on Habakkuk.
But the site of the discovery has posed a problem from the outset: why was such an extraordinary quantity of texts concentrated and hidden precisely in the desert caves?
Not far from the caves lies the settlement of Qumran, on the north-western shore of the Dead Sea. Archaeological excavations led by the French Dominican Father Roland de Vaux of the École Biblique in Jerusalem brought to light a complex of buildings, cisterns, storehouses and rooms serving various purposes. De Vaux proposed identifying Qumran as the centre of an ascetic Jewish community, traditionally associated with the Essenes. According to this interpretation, the inhabitants would have copied, collected and used the texts that were subsequently deposited in the surrounding caves.
This gave rise to one of the most enduring yet controversial images in the history of the Scrolls: that of the scriptorium at Qumran, a sort of ancient copyists’ workshop, sometimes compared to the scribes of medieval monasteries. This hypothesis has also been supported by the discovery of artefacts consistent with writing activities and by the presence, in the caves and within the settlement, of distinctive cylindrical jars, regarded by some as a significant clue to the link between the site and the manuscripts.
However, this reconstruction has never achieved consensus amongst scholars. The very nature of the Qumran settlement has been interpreted in different ways: as a community centre, a place of religious retreat, an agricultural settlement, a villa or even a military installation. Above all, the relationship between the settlement and the scrolls remains a matter of debate. The variety of handwritings, dates, texts and material characteristics makes it difficult to conclude that the scrolls were produced entirely locally.
The problem, therefore, is not merely to establish who lived at Qumran, but to understand where the manuscripts came from.
Some researchers consider it plausible that at least some were copied within the community itself; others, however, consider it possible that Qumran was primarily a place for the preservation of texts originating from other centres in Judea. Jerusalem, in particular, has been identified as one of the possible places of origin for some of the manuscripts.
The caves may have been used as a refuge and storage facility during a time of crisis, perhaps in connection with the war against Rome and the destruction of the Temple in 70 AD. In short, the so-called ‘Qumran library’ could be a collection formed through the acquisition, copying, exchange and relocation of manuscripts, which ultimately found its way into the desert on the eve of the great catastrophe that was to engulf Jerusalem and the Temple.
From content to material
This is precisely where Popović’s research comes into play. For decades, the provenance of the scrolls has been studied primarily through their content, language, palaeography – that is, the analysis of the forms of writing – and codicology. Now, a completely different level is being added: that of the material itself.
Around 250 samples of parchment and papyrus from the collection of the Israel Antiquities Authority will be examined. The researchers will compare the chemical composition of the materials, whilst also studying papyrus samples from Egypt. The aim is to understand whether the supports, inks and preparation techniques might preserve traces of specific geographical areas or different production environments.
In short, parchment is no longer merely the medium on which someone wrote a text two thousand years ago: it becomes a historical source in its own right. This wealth of data will be cross-referenced with palaeographic, codicological, linguistic and archaeological information. Artificial intelligence will be required to correlate thousands of variables and search for patterns and clusters that might elude traditional analysis.
It is no small matter that research of this scale is supported by the European Research Council. The funding testifies not only to the importance attached to the Scrolls, but also to the confidence that new tools can be used to tackle an issue that has remained unresolved for generations of scholars. A network is thus taking shape around Groningen, comprising the Israel Antiquities Authority, the University of Pisa, the University of Naples Federico II, the University of Southern Denmark in Odense, the University of Leuven, and museums and papyrus collections in Egypt, Berlin and Turin.
It marks a shift in perspective: from the question ‘what does this scroll say?’ to the question ‘what story does this scroll tell even before it is read?’. The new project aims to reconstruct a geography of knowledge in ancient Judea: where the scribes worked, what materials they used, how the texts circulated, where the centres of production were, and how manuscripts originating in different places ended up in the same caves.
The answer to the Qumran enigma may lie hidden in the leather, the ink, the fibres of the papyrus and the faint traces left by the journey of those manuscripts before their final, mysterious arrival in the Dead Sea Caves.
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