Fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls bearing traces of ink, papyri from Egypt, and particles of dust: these are among the materials that will arrive at the Department of Chemistry and Industrial Chemistry of the University of Pisa in 2027 for analysis as part of the Tracing Scribes and Scrolls, a project that has just been awarded €2.5 million by the European Research Council (ERC). Led by Professor Mladen Popović of the University of Groningen, the project aims to reconstruct the origins of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the collection of parchment and papyrus manuscripts containing the oldest surviving biblical texts. Researchers will combine analytical chemistry, artificial intelligence and palaeography. More than 250 fragments will be investigated using non-invasive techniques, while a small selection will undergo more in-depth analyses.
“The Department of Chemistry and Industrial Chemistry will be responsible for collecting all the information on the organic materials,” explains Professor Ilaria Degano of the University of Pisa. “We will analyse around twenty micro-fragments taken from the edges of the Scrolls to characterise the collagen in the parchment, obtaining information about the animals from which it was made and, in some cases, about their diet and living conditions. Combined with trace-element analyses carried out by the project’s partners, these data could help us identify the areas where the Scrolls originated and determine where they were produced. We will also analyse the ink to detect any traces of organic binders. In this case, the samples will be extremely small—almost invisible to the naked eye—to avoid compromising the integrity of the artefacts.”
The data obtained from the Dead Sea Scroll samples will then be compared with those from papyri preserved in the Egyptian Museums of Turin and Berlin to identify their production centres and geographical origin. Dust particles found on the manuscripts will also be analysed to help reconstruct their movements over time. Finally, all the data collected will be processed using artificial intelligence models to identify patterns and similarities that are not immediately apparent.
“Our ambition is to find, within these ancient materials, the equivalent of a modern watermark that will allow us to distinguish different production centres and reconstruct the networks through which manuscripts circulated in ancient Judea,” explains Degano.
The new research builds on the ERC project The Hands That Wrote the Bible, to which the University of Pisa had already contributed through a team comprising Ilaria Degano, Maria Perla Colombini and Jacopo La Nasa. The results, published in PLOS One in 2025, showed that the Scrolls are older than previously believed and significantly refined the chronology of the manuscripts.
“If the previous project enabled us to establish more precisely when the Scrolls were written, this new challenge aims to discover where the materials were produced, where the scribes worked, and how the manuscripts circulated,” concludes Degano. “This research could provide new insights not only for the study of the Dead Sea Scrolls, but more broadly for reconstructing the material history of ancient manuscripts.”
