Ancient ‘blank’ Dead Sea Scrolls have HIDDEN messages scrawled by mysterious sect 2,000 years ago, scanner reveals
FOUR fragments of the infamous ancient Dead Sea Scrolls have revealed hidden text.
Researchers using intense imaging found the mysterious parchment pieces contain a readable word, sewn thread, letters and ruled lines.
The Hebrew phrase "Shabbat" is the one phrase that can be read clearly.
It means Sabbath, Judaism's day of rest.
The Dead Sea Scrolls are ancient Jewish religious manuscripts that were found in the Qumran Caves in the dessert to the north of the Dead Sea.
They were first discovered around 1946 and are thought to date back to around the last three centuries BC.
Professor Joan Taylor from Kings College London made the discovery when she held a magnifying glass over a fragment and spotted the Hebrew letter "L".
At first, she thought she was imagining things but then she noticed other letters on other pieces of the rare parchments.
She said: "Looking at one of the fragments with a magnifying glass, I thought I saw a small, faded letter - a lamed, the Hebrew letter 'L'".
“Frankly, since all these fragments were supposed to be blank and had even been cut into for leather studies, I also thought I might be imagining things.
"But then it seemed maybe other fragments could have very faded letters too.
“With new techniques for revealing ancient texts now available, I felt we had to know if these letters could be exposed.
"There are only a few on each fragment, but they are like missing pieces of a jigsaw puzzle you find under a sofa.”
The researchers used a technique called multispectral imaging, which uses different wavelengths to capture images of hard to see figures.
The word "Shabbat" and several other letters on the fragments have led the researchers to think it could be from the biblical book of Ezekiel (46:1-3).
The Dead Sea Scrolls are actually made up of 900 manuscripts thought to be written by an ancient Jewish sect called the Essenes.
The Essenes are thought to have existed from the 2nd Century BC until the 2nd Century AD in Palestine.
Analysis of 33 skeletons buried at Qumran fit in with the theory that a religious sect of men created the scrolls.
Prior to this, it had been claimed a community of celibate priestly men lived near the Qumran Caves.
The skeletons, excavated in 2016, were definitely or most likely males, aged between 20 and 50 - or possibly older - when they died.
Scholars have been fascinated by the scrolls since their discovery.
The ancient parchments contain versions of the Hebrew bible, rules, calendars and even astronomy observations.
The Dead Sea Scroll fragments are being housed at the University of Manchester in the UK.
A collection was donated to the university in 1997 but it hadn't received much attention until now.
The Dead Sea Scrolls explained
Here's what you need to know...
The Dead Sea Scrolls are said to have been discovered in 11 caves along the northwest shore of the Dead Sea between 1946/47 and 1956.
There are around 981 different texts in total and almost all of the Hebrew Bible is represented in them.
The Dead Sea Scrolls include fragments from every book of the Old Testament except for the Book of Esther.
The majority of the Dead Sea Scrolls are in Hebrew, with some fragments written in the ancient paleo-Hebrew alphabet thought to have fallen out of use in the fifth century BC.
However some are in Aramaic, the language spoken by many Jewish people between the sixth century BC and the siege of Jerusalem in 70 AD.
Several texts feature translations of the Hebrew Bible into Greek, which some Jewish people used instead of or in addition to Hebrew at the time of the scrolls’ creation.
They have been translated into English and published digitally.
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In other archaeology news, the oldest bones of modern humans ever found in Europe have been discovered in a Bulgarian cave.
Skeletons found in a mass grave reveal the horrors endured by African slaves.
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