Dead Sea Scrolls coming to Toronto

In a blockbuster that the Royal Ontario Museum compares to the 1978 King Tut exhibit, the museum plans to bring the Dead Sea scrolls to Toronto next summer.

Sixteen of the scrolls, which were found by Bedouin goat-herders and by archaeologists between 1947 and 1956 in 11 caves on the northwestern shore of the Dead Sea, will be on display.

The scrolls, written in Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek between 250 BC and 68 AD, had been hidden in the caves for more than 2,000 years.

"The Dead Sea scrolls are the earliest written record of much of the first testament or the Torah or the Bible plus a number of other texts about law and the apocalypse," ROM chief executive William Thorsell said in an interview with CBC News.

"They have been in those jars for 2,000 years, so when you look at Genesis, Deuteronomy, the Psalms, the Ten Commandments, these are the earliest written records that we have of these foundation documents really of a number of great traditions," he said.

The exhibit is the most ambitious planned by the ROM since the opening of its new Crystal extension designed by celebrity architect Daniel Libeskind.

The Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit will run June 27, 2009, until Jan. 3, 2010, at the Royal Ontario Museum. (source)