Like a church endowed with holy relics, the Royal Ontario Museum is a place of pilgrimage these days. Eight sections of the venerated Dead Sea Scrolls — texts preserved in arid caves in the Judean desert for nearly 2,000 years — are magnets for the scholarly minded, the curious and the religious.
In the past three months more than 130,000 have processed into downtown Toronto’s temple of history and culture to see a handful of fragments from one of the greatest archeological discoveries of the 20 century. Pilgrims leave their money offerings just inside the door and descend to the second level of the basement. But before entering the exhibit’s holy of holies, the dimly lit inner sanctum where tattered swatches of priceless leather are kept, they navigate a slalom of artifacts, videos and displays designed to set the context of the religious and political life of ancient Israel from the third century Before Common Era (BCE) to the first century of the Common Era (CE). They sit hushed in front of a short video explaining the initial discovery of the scrolls in a cave near the Dead Sea by Bedouin shepherds in 1947. Over the following decade, subsequent archeological expeditions exhumed about 900 scrolls from 11 caves. The video ends and after taking a few steps pilgrims find themselves in a dimly lit room with white walls. Scattered within the large space, in no particular pattern, are eight thick-topped display cases resembling altars. Supplicants bend from the waist, their faces hovering above windows cut into the tops, and peer at some of the world’s most famous relics. Some people take a quick peek and move to the next station. Others, like Sue Horncastle, linger awhile. Read more
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