Israeli researchers, using sophisticated imaging technology first developed by the American aerospace program, have deciphered the text on heretofore illegible fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Ruth Schuster and Nir Hasson explain:
For the sake of posterity, digitalization, and research, all [the scrolls] are being photographed in high resolution under different types of light, which among other things brings previously unseen writing invisible to the naked eye, as well as some ink stains, to light. [One fragment’s] handwriting differs from previously found scroll fragments, [the Israel Antiquities Authority’s Oren] Ableman explains. Its uniqueness leads him to speculate that there may be a whole scroll that has disappeared, or at any rate, not been found yet. . . .
The writing on many of these fragments is just a few letters rather than complete words or sentences. Even so, Ableman could tell which scrolls most of the fragments were from, generally speaking. . . .
[The one exception] is written in ancient paleo-Hebrew, which could not be attributed to any one of the known manuscripts. This raises the possibility that it belonged to a still unknown manuscript. [Researchers] haven’t done carbon-dating on the fragment, but this form of blocky paleo-Hebrew was the script commonly used in the First Temple period. That said, some scrolls were still being written using that ancient script in the late Second Temple period. Even among the paleo-Hebrew fragments, there are signs that help the researchers distinguish differences between First Temple and Second Temple texts, and certain features of the handwriting indicate that this fragment dates to the late Second Temple period.
Read more on Haaretz: https://www.haaretz.com/archaeology/MAGAZINE-nasa-technology-reveals-existence-of-missing-dead-sea-scroll-1.6050952