New research has revealed that four Dead Sea Scroll manuscript fragments housed at The University of Manchester’s John Rylands Library, which were previously thought to be blank, do in fact contain text, the King’s College of London reports.

A University of Malta professor, Dennis Mizzi, was part of the study with Professor Joan Taylor (King’s College London) and Professor Marcello Fidanzio (Faculty of Theology of Lugano), the college says.

The study was undertaken as part of a Leverhulme-funded study held at King’s College London.

Unlike the recent cases of forgeries assumed to be Dead Sea Scrolls fragments, all of these small pieces were unearthed in the official excavations of the Qumran caves, and were never passed through the antiquities market.

Read the full report here