From Haaretz:

Drilling is to begin Wednesday half a kilometer into the bed of the Dead Sea to study hundreds of thousands of years of geological history, in the largest-scale scientific drilling ever carried out in Israel.
The material to be extracted will form a column only a few centimeters thick – but 500 meters long. Through it, scientists will be able to document the climate in the region to a precision level of within a few years, and learn about the earthquakes that shaped the landscape during this time.
The sponsor of the project, the International Continental Drilling Program, is a consortium of several countries that conducts two scientific drillings a year, and finally chose the Dead Sea area after repeated requests over recent years. Locally, the project is being supported by the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, and the Tamar Regional Council.
The drilling, which is expected to cost approximately $2.5 million, is a regional project, implemented jointly with Jordan and the Palestinian Authority, as well as with Germany, Switzerland, Norway, Japan and the United States.

The full story is here.

From Earth Times:

This week, Berlin scientists are to brief scholars on 21st century methods of sorting the fragments, which contain Hebrew, Greek and Aramaic writing and are kept at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem.
The new methods, which include shining X-rays through the parchment and papyrus, are guaranteed not to damage them.
Re-analysis would not only help to resolve some fierce academic and religious disputes that have been based on differing readings of the texts, but also help reconstruct several more documents which had seemed lost for ever in the muddle of fragments.
The new methods were evolved by BAM, Germany’s material-science laboratory in Berlin.
“We’ll be able to say if any two fragments have identical material properties,” explained BAM spokeswoman Ulrike Rockland. “If they do, they come from the same piece. No one could say that with certainty before.”
[…]
These include examination with light, electron and environmental scanning electron microscopes and advanced technologies known as X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy and Raman spectroscopy.
The experts devised standard ways to trace how each piece of parchment was made and how it aged.
“Goatskin is an organic material. If two fragments have the same X-ray, Raman and infrared signature, they must belong together,” said Rockland.
The procedures can also identify different batches of handmade ink. The scientists manufactured their own iron-gall ink using ancient recipes to test what happens as it dries and eats its way into the parchment.
The sole disadvantage of the new tests is the high cost.

The full story is here.

HT: Joe Lauer

The Israel Antiquities Authority is collaborating with Google to put all of the Dead Sea Scrolls online for free.  From Device Magazine:

As part of the celebrations on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of its establishment, the Israel Antiquities Authority is launching a unique project – The Leon Levy Dead Sea Scrolls Digital Library – to document the entire collection of  the Dead Sea Scrolls. A major lead gift from the Leon Levy Foundation, with additional major funding from the Arcadia Foundation and the support of Yad Hanadiv Foundation, will enable the Israel Antiquities Authority to use the most advanced and innovative technologies available to image the entire collection of 900 manuscripts comprising c. 30,000 Dead Sea Scrolls fragments in hi-resolution and multi spectra and make the digitized images freely available and accessible to anyone anywhere in the world on the internet.  This is the first time that the collection of Scrolls will be photographed in its entirety since the 1950’s. The IAA announced this morning that it is collaborating with the Google R&D center in Israel in this milestone project to upload not only all of the digitized Scrolls images but also additional data online that will allow users to perform meaningful searches across a broad range of data in a number of languages and formats, which will result in unprecedented scholarly and popular access to the Scrolls and related research and scholarship and should lead to new insights into the world of the Scrolls.

The full story is here.  Many other similar articles can be found here.

A few years ago, scientists succeeded in raising a date palm tree from a 2,000-year-old seed found at Masada.  Now botanists are attempting to revive the balsam plant.  From an article published last week in Haaretz:

Saplings of the balsam plant that have been cultivated in Kibbutz Ein Gedi’s botanical garden for the past two years are a first test of the possibility of bringing the legendary bush, which flourished in the Second Temple period, back to the Dead Sea region, two scholars told a Jerusalem audience yesterday.
Speaking at a conference organized by the Elad association in Jerusalem’s City of David, Prof. Zohar Amar and Dr. David Iluz of Bar-Ilan University described their research into the plant’s identity.
Since the 1970s, there have been several failed attempts to acclimate the plant believed to be balsam, one of ancient Palestine’s most economically significant plants, to modern-day Israel. But the staff of Ein Gedi’s botanical garden are optimistic that the current effort will succeed.
The plant is mentioned dozens of times in ancient sources, from the Bible to the Talmud, as well as in Greek and Roman writings. The most prestigious perfume known in the ancient Near East was produced from it, and it was also known for its healing qualities.
The balsam plantations in the Dead Sea area were under direct royal control, and the methods of cultivation and production were a closely guarded secret and a powerful political tool. For example, the balsam groves in Jericho became a bone of contention between Cleopatra of Egypt and Herod the Great. During the Bar Kokhba Revolt, in the second century CE, Jewish fighters uprooted the plants so they would not be captured by the Romans.

The story continues here.  There is quite a bit of variety in the translations for balsam, but you may recall some of these:

Genesis 37:25 (HCSB) Then they sat down to eat a meal. They looked up, and there was a caravan of Ishmaelites coming from Gilead.  Their camels were carrying aromatic gum, balsam, and resin, going down to Egypt. 

2 Samuel 5:23 (NIV) so David inquired of the Lord, and he answered, “Do not go straight up, but circle around behind them and attack them in front of the balsam trees.

Song of Solomon 5:13 (NAS) 
“His cheeks are like a bed of balsam,
Banks of sweet-scented herbs;
His lips are lilies
Dripping with liquid myrrh.

HT: Joe Lauer