…word about Seales’ software reached the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA). They already had the Ein Gedi scroll scanned with a micro-CT machine but couldn\u2019t make sense of the information. Could Seales help? A meeting was arranged in the U.S., and over lunch, he was handed a hard drive containing terabytes of raw data. Though in much better condition than the Roman scrolls, the Hebrew parchment offered its own challenges. Made of animal skin instead of plant-based papyrus, it had bubbled and blistered over the years. New programming tricks that corrected for those imperfections in the data would be needed.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is probably a simpler problem than the Herculaneum scrolls, which are really the worst-case scenario in the field,\u201d\u009d says Vito Mocella of the Italian National Research Council, who heads the Italian team that ultimately found a way to read letters on the Roman scrolls using an enhanced scanning technique and a powerful particle accelerator. \u201cBut even if it\u2019s simpler, it\u2019s still not so easy.\u201d\u009d<\/p>\n
Luckily for Seales, the Hebrews added metal to their inks, which showed up clearly as bright white spots in the CT data. As his software virtually unwound a single layer from the middle of the scroll, text revealed itself: \u201cThe LORD summoned Moses and spoke to him,\u201d\u009d it began. Israeli translators identified the words as the first verse of Leviticus, the book of laws.<\/p>\n