Dead Sea Scrolls: How to make a book last for millennia

[Michael]

Dead Sea Scrolls: How to make a book last for millennia: Study of Dead Sea Scroll sheds light on a lost ancient parchment-making technology

The elements they discovered included sulfur, sodium, and calcium in different proportions, spread across the surface of the parchment.

Parchment is made from animal skins that have had all hair and fatty residues removed by soaking them in a lime solution (from the middle ages onwards) or through enzymatic and other treatments (in antiquity), scraping them clean, and then stretching them tight in a frame to dry. When dried, sometimes the surface was further prepared by rubbing with salts, as was apparently the case with the Temple Scroll.

It's pretty amazing that the Dead Sea Scrolls survived for as long as they have. It just demonstrates the ingenuity and the sophisticated technology of the Essenes, not to mention the dry conditions of the region itself.

 

[Brightmoon]

There are too many people who’ll ascribe lost technology as coming from aliens . Humans in the Bronze Age were just as smart as we are it’s just that, to put it poetically , we stand on the shoulders of giants and can see further

 

[Michael]

Exactly. Human have always been intelligent and creative, we just enjoy the improvements in technology today.