Israel on Tuesday announced an ambitious new project aimed at finally piecing together some of the thousands of fragments of the 2,000-year-old Dead Sea Scrolls that have mystified experts since their discovery in the 1940s and 1950s.

The $1.75 million project aims to utilize the latest digital tools to help researchers identify connections between fragments, the Israel Antiquities Authority said. It also involves unprecedented cooperation between key scholars, computer science experts, and archives in Israel and overseas.

Ultimately, said the IAA, the aim is to publish a new generation of digital editions of the Dead Sea Scrolls, “rich in information and updatable” on the basis of the evolving research and technical advances essay writing.

Some 16,000 of an estimated 20,000 fragments have been digitally imaged to date, Pnina Shor, curator and director of the Dead Sea Scrolls Project at the Israel Antiquities Authority, told the mail website on Tuesday, with scientists constantly developing improved tools to piece together them together. “It is the ultimate jigsaw puzzle.”

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