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It was followed by a tour of the Israel Antiquities Authority’s Scrolls Laboratory (where reconstruction and preservation of the scrolls are carried out) and the Israel Museum’s Shrine of the Book (where the bulk of the Dead Sea Scrolls are displayed); guided by Prof. Noam Mizrahi, Head of the Orion Center at the Hebrew University. In addition to seeing some of the scrolls themselves, this gave participants the opportunity to meet some of the scrolls’ conservators and have a glimpse of their work in progress—a fitting closure to the intensive learning of the workshop itself.

The goal was to establish familiarity with the tools and methodology used in digital reconstruction and to provide the practical tools for the independent continuation of such work. Twelve participants from five countries, from diverse scholarly fields, and with different levels of digital expertise, were introduced to relevant software and various digital techniques. The workshop began with a broad survey of the finds from the Judean desert; of the history of their sorting, cataloging, and preservation; and finally, of their recent digitalization. The participants were then introduced to the graphic software GIMP and to the process of preparing the images of a fragment for the reconstruction process. The third session focused on digital paleography and font design; the principles of digital font preparation were discussed and practiced. The final sessions introduced the concept of the digital canvas; that is, the digital platform on which the scroll is recreated. Using Adobe InDesign, the participants recreated three columns of a scroll from Qumran. Thus, the workshop was not merely theoretical but included the hands-on practice of methods and procedures required for digital reconstruction of scroll fragments, using participants’ personal computers, and aimed at their scholarly interests.