Ancient Scroll Sent to Fogg For Unrolling

Fogg Museum has agreed to examine a 2,000-year-old partly disintegrated parchment scroll to determine whether it can be safely opened, Director John P. Coolidge '35 announced last night.

Officials of the museum accepted the scroll yesterday from its owner, Mar Athanasius Y. Samuel, Metropolitan of Jerusalem and Hashemite Jordan. The conservation department will now spend several days making a preliminary examination of it.

The scroll, which was in such a dried and brittle condition that experts were of the opinion that it could be opened only after chemical treatment, was brought to the Fogg Museum at the suggestion of Professor Carl H. Kracling, President of the American Schools of Oriental Research at Yale University.

Rutherford J. Gettens, Director of Technical Research in the museum, will decide after careful tests if the scroll can be opened. If the museum does decide to open it, it is expected that at least six months will be required to complete the project.

The scroll, believed by biblical scholars to be the lost Book of Lamech, is one of four discovered in 1947 by a goatherd on the shores of the Dead Sea and brought to the United States by owner Samuel.