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Originally Posted by OMG!WTF!
Do you appreciate these scrolls as fine art? Like are they beautiful to you beyond their meaning and historical importance? I guess that's a part of art appreciation as well.
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I’m not sure, honestly. There are many of the Scrolls that I find astonishingly beautiful, but it is a different sort of appreciation than I have for fine art. The vast majority of the scrolls—while written by an elite level group of highly trained scribes amid a primarily illiterate population (estimates range between 2–10%)—are nevertheless predominantly utilitarian objects. I appreciate them for how they help me to understand history, literature, religion and culture, but “fine art” is not really how I appraise them.
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Would you conserve and frame a piece and hang it on your wall or keep it locked in a box? Are some piece more beautiful than others? Like is there a Picasso among the more common examples?
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There is definitely a wide range in quality and aesthetic value throughout the Dead Sea Scrolls. A lot of this has to do with function, and is helpful for scholars in understanding the texts they contain. For example, I have said that the fragment pictured in my avatar is from my favourite scroll. Reasons for this is because it is a fun document to reconstruct, and it contains some surprising oddities. But another reason is that the script is exquisite. Those letters you see? They measure around 1.5 mm high! Can you imagine writing that beautifully, that precisely, on that scale?