The Diggers

In the halls of Harvard's Fogg Art Museum last week, there was an expectant hush. After nine months of experimenting with bits of ancient leather, Fogg's Rutherford J. Gettens, chief of technical research, had decided to try a ticklish job: the unrolling of a brown and brittle scroll, dry with the dust of 2,000 years.

The scroll, which was brought to the U.S. by the Metropolitan of Jerusalem, was discovered in 1947 with seven others in a cave near the Dead Sea. Three of the others, which were in excellent condition and easily opened, contain a complete text of the book of Isaiah and other holy writings (TIME, Oct. 31). This one, whose cracked leather surface looks like a dried cigar, is believed to contain the world's oldest Old Testament text, the lost book of Lantech (father of Noah).

Because the leather of the scroll's outer layers has become almost completely gelatinized, Gettens plans to do the delicate job in a damp room, using sharp scalpels and other surgical instruments to separate the fused layers. The leather, said he, "breaks with a glassy fracture like glue. In fact, it is glue." But Gettens hopes that he can salvage at least the inner layers, which he thinks may be parchment. Expected time on the operating table: six months.

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