by Daniel EstrinMar, 16 2021 (Morning Edition)
Conservation work on the basket in the Israel Antiquities Authority s laboratories. Image: Yaniv Berman/Israel Antiquities Authority
JERUSALEM Israeli government archaeologists say they have discovered tiny fragments of an ancient biblical scroll near the Dead Sea, the first time in more than 60 years that Dead Sea Scroll parchments were discovered in a professional excavation and not by looters.
The archaeologists also found a 6,000-year-old mummified child and what they think is the world s oldest fully intact basket, dating back about 10,500 years.
The artifacts were found in an arid desert region where the Dead Sea Scrolls, a collection of parchments and papyri including the world s oldest copies of biblical texts dated between the third and first centuries B.C., were first discovered in the 1940s and 50s.