Dead Sea scrolls online

The Dead Sea Scrolls are now available online. Google assisted the Israel Museum in digitizing what is widely believed to be the most significant archaeological find of the 20th century, the BBC reports.

Five scrolls have been captured, including the Temple Scroll and Great Isaiah Scroll.

Ardon Bar-Hama, a noted photographer of antiquities, used ultraviolet-protected flash tubes to light the scrolls for 1/4000th of a second. The exposure time – which is much shorter than a conventional camera flash – was designed to protect the scrolls from damage.

The Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered between 1947 and 1956 inside 11 caves along the shore of the Dead Sea, East of Jerusalem.