The Dead Sea Scrolls are the oldest Old Testament manuscripts written from 250 B.C. to 68 A.D.

The oldest Old Testament manuscripts found in the Dead Sea, showing the origin of Christianity, are in Seoul and will be exhibited for the first time in the nation.
Five genuine pieces and three copied pieces of the Dead Sea Scrolls will be on display, along with 800 pieces of other relics at Yongsan National Memorial Museum in Seoul from Dec. 5 to June 4, 2008, reported Koreatimes.co.kr.
The exhibition titled “The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Birth of Christianity“ is expected to draw much attention from not only Christians but also Korean historians and non-Christians as it is one of the oldest anthropological and historical resources.
The Dead Sea Scrolls are the oldest Old Testament manuscripts written from 250 B.C. to 68 A.D. The scrolls are 1,000 years older than the Alepo manuscript and the Leningrad manuscript, which were thought to be the oldest Bibles.
The exhibition of the scrolls, which link the Old Testament to early Christianity, include an 8.2 meter scroll and various original scrolls.
The scrolls consist of more than 800 manuscripts in Hebrew and Aramaic that were discovered 60 years ago in caves east of Beit-ul Moqaddas near the ruins of a forlorn settlement known as Qumran, beginning in 1947, on the Dead Sea.
The texts are of great religious and historical significance, as they include practically the only known surviving copies of Biblical documents made before 100 A.D.
“Before discovering these scrolls, many biblical scholars thought that there would be no more scrolls in the area. But these scrolls which had been kept for 2,000 years were finally unveiled 60 years ago,“ Rev. Song Chang-hyun, professor of Catholic University of Daegu, told The Korea Times.
Rev. Song, who is a renowned expert in the Dead Sea Scrolls in Korea, explained that these scrolls have three kinds of significance; they are the oldest record of the Old Testament; they are Hebrew and Aramaic-written texts; they are the first direct historical sources showing how Jews lived and about their thought in the early Christian period.
Along with the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit hall, the Qumran Community exhibit hall shows the lives of the people from whom the scrolls came.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

One of just two surviving pages from a Mozart manuscript has been sold at an auction in London for £110,900.
The folio, from the composer’s draft for the Sinfonia Concertante, has set a new record for a single page of his work, which has stood since 1998.
The item was purchased from Sotheby’s by dealers based in London who were bidding on behalf of a private client, according to BBC.
The violin, viola and orchestral work was composed in 1779, securing Mozart’s standing as a great composer aged 23.
The leaf had not been seen in public for decades before the auction and had not been available for scholars to scrutinize.
Dr Simon Maguire, a music specialist at Sotheby’s, said: “We were glad to see this extraordinary survival attract such strong competition.“
“Its significance as the most important single leaf of Mozart to have appeared on the market for decades is reflected in the price it achieved.
“It is one of Mozart’s greatest works, and we are thrilled to have handled a manuscript that takes us so close to its original inception,“ he added.

Don McCullin

Don McCullin, one of the greatest war photographers of the 20th century, unveiled a retrospective of his work in Madrid on Wednesday, a mirror of the conflicts that have wracked the planet in the past 40 years.
It is the Briton’s first major exhibition in Spain, the country where the myth of modern war photographers was born with Robert Capa during the 1936-39 civil war, AFP reported.
McCullin’s picture of a shell-shocked US Marine in Hue in 1968 during the Vietnam war was seen around the world, and is among 129 black and white photographs on show until January 27 at the Canal de Isabel II Cultural Centre.
His work, mostly for the British newspaper The Sunday Times, has taken him to Biafra, Vietnam, Afghanistan, the Middle East, Northern Ireland, Bangladesh and Cyprus, and in 1964 he won the World Press Photo Award.
The exhibition is called “Don McCullin, a heroic path“. But McCullin is uncomfortable with this description.
“I am not a hero, even though I took a lot of risks,“ he told AFP. “My role was to go there to recall the tragedies and bring back the message.“
He also resents being called “an artist,“ lamenting the current tendency in photojournalism to “associate photography with art.“
At 72, he has abandoned war zones to photograph “peaceful“ country scenes in the English county of Somerset where he now lives, or, in his latest project, Roman archeological sites from around the Mediterranean.
But even there, he cannot escape the feeling of tragedy associated with his photographs.
“When you see the magnificence of the monuments, you know it could have only be achieved by cruelty,“ he said.

Three in four European Union (EU) citizens believe that people with a different ethnic, religious or national background enrich the cultural life of their countries, according to the results of a survey.
Member states where people tend to have most frequent contacts with people of different backgrounds--Luxembourg, Sweden, Ireland, the Netherlands and Britain --are among those where citizens often consider such contacts as a boost to their country’s cultural life, reported Chinaview.cn.
The highest levels of disagreement with this opinion were found in Malta, Cyprus, Bulgaria and Romania. But even in those countries, more than half of the respondents think that people with different cultural backgrounds enrich their everyday life.
Overall, young people, people with the highest levels of education and those living in cities are more likely to think that cultural diversity is an asset to a country’s cultural life, according to a survey commissioned by the European Commission.
A remarkably high number of EU citizens (83 percent) value the benefits of intercultural contacts, and two-thirds think that family or cultural traditions should be followed by the younger generation.
The survey, conducted in November 2007 among 27,000 citizens from 27 EU member states, also reveals that day-to-day interaction among people belonging to different cultures is a reality in Europe.
Two-thirds of respondents were able to recall interaction with at least one person of a different religion, ethnic background or nationality than their own in the seven days prior to being questioned.
The highest ratios of citizens having contacts were reported from Luxembourg (82 percent), Ireland (77 percent), Britain (76 percent) and Austria (75 percent).
The countries with lowest level of interaction were Estonia (43 percent) and Romania (44 percent).

On the threshold of the Heroes Day that will be celebrated for the first time in Russia on December 9, the country’s first Museum of Heroes of the Soviet Union and of Russia, and Cavaliers of the Order of Glory opened in Moscow.
The exposition presents photos, documents, personal belongings, correspondence and memoirs--the entire chronicles of the country’s heroic history since 1934, when the title of the Hero of the Soviet Union was established, up to nowadays, wrote Russia-ic.com.
The visitors will see pictures and paraphernalia of heroic polar explorers and pilots, the test pilot Valery Chkalov, Marshall Georgy Zhukov and many others. The exposition dedicated to the first Hero of the Soviet Union, the pilot Anatoli Lyapidevsky, takes a special place at the museum.
The total area of the museum located in the south-west of Moscow, is over two thousand square meters. Apart from the major exposition, the museum has additional exhibition halls, conference halls, and a library.

The 5,000-year-old ancient cemetery of Shahr-e Sukhtah (Burnt City) in the Iranian city of Zabol, Sistan-Balouchestan province.

Syrian archeologists have unearthed two Bronze-era cemeteries dating from the 18th century B.C., the third set of ancient graveyards found in less than a month, Syria’s Archeological Department chief said.
Mahmoud Hamoud said the circular limestone cemeteries that were discovered in the village of Heina, south of the capital Damascus, contained skeletons of both adults and children, more than 120 pieces of pottery, jars and precious stones, AFP reported.
Syria’s official SANA news agency, quoting the antiquities directorate, said the cemeteries resemble sites in the ancient Palestinian West Bank town of Jericho and the southern Lebanese port city of Sidon.
Last month, Syrian media reported the discovery of a Roman-era cross-shaped limestone cemetery in the Nasiriya area in the remote Hasaka province, some 700 kilometers (440 miles) northeast of Damascus dating from the 3rd century A.D. The graveyard also contained coins, pottery shards and bracelets dating to the later Aramaic era.
Also last month, an older cemetery from the 2nd century A.D. was discovered in the famed ruins of Palmyra, one of the region’s most impressive sites from Classical antiquity.
Syrian archeologists also reported finding a rare limestone panel and a glass jar containing an infant’s ashes in the ancient town of Palmyra.

A Canadian man has returned to Egypt an ancient alabaster vase that could date back four millennia to grant his father’s dying wish, the supreme council of antiquities said.
Robert Christy delivered the antique vessel dating back to Egypt’s Middle Kingdom (2030 BC to 1640 BC) to the Egyptian embassy in Ottawa, the council said in a statement, said AFP.
His father, who had inherited the heirloom, had requested that he hand back the vase and that it go on show at the Egyptian museum in Cairo.
“The vase measures 16 cm (6.3 inches) in height and is in good condition,“ council Secretary General Zahi Hawass said.

Chinese archeologists are excited at the prospect that the remains of a 4,000-year-old city--larger than the Forbidden City--unearthed on the east coast could be the oldest kingdom in China’s history.
The Liangzhu ancient city ruins--found in Yuhang county of Zhejiang Province-- can be traced back at least 4,300 years, and cover an area of 2.9 million square meters with the city walls 4-6 meters in width, Xinhua reported.
The first discovery was made in June last year when apartment buildings were to be built in Putaoban Village of Yuhang.
Archeologists were called in because the village is part of the Neolithic Liangzhu Culture protection zone. It is centered on Yuhang and extends to present day Zhejiang, Jiangsu, Anhui and Jiangxi provinces as well as Shanghai.
The Liangzhu Culture of 5,300-4,000 years ago in East China has yielded many exquisite artworks for religious use, most notably jade artifacts.
Under a patch of rice field, archeologists found a 40-meter-wide ancient ditch built of hardened earth, in which were large amounts of pottery shards, Liu Bin, a researcher at the Zhejiang Archeological Institute said.
When archeologists dug a deep hole on the eastern bank of the north-south ditch, they were surprised to find a large area built of hammered soil and pebbles.
Further excavations showed that the ditch was a canal outside the city, and the area to its east was the remains of part of the city wall.
The walls extended 1,500-1,700 m from east to west and 1,800-1,900 m from north to south. The city covers an area of 2.9 million sq m, 200,000 sq m more than the Forbidden City.
It is the largest Neolithic city discovered in China, said Yan Wenming, a professor at Peking University.
Historians have long speculated about the existence of such a kingdom 4 millennia ago, Liu Qingzhu, director of the Archeological Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences said.