# Researchers Launch AI Project to Trace Dead Sea Scrolls

> Source: <https://letsdatascience.com/news/researchers-launch-ai-project-to-trace-dead-sea-scrolls-e9f88d44>
> Published: 2026-06-30 13:44:47+00:00

Editorial analysis: For practitioners, this project illustrates how combining chemical assays, paleography, codicology, and AI can create multimodal provenance pipelines for cultural heritage datasets. According to The Jerusalem Post, the European Research Council awarded a **€2.5 million Advanced Grant** to Professor **Mladen Popović** of the **University of Groningen** for a five-year research project titled **Tracing Scribes and Scrolls**. JNS reports the project will analyze about **250 samples** of parchment, papyrus, and ink from the Israel Antiquities Authority collection and will combine chemical signatures, handwriting (paleographical) analysis, codicology, and artificial intelligence. The Jerusalem Post and JNS state the project partners include the **Israel Antiquities Authority** and several European laboratories, and that the new effort builds on Popović's earlier ERC-funded project, **The Hands That Wrote the Bible**, which pioneered AI-based scribe identification.