Ink&Blood, Dead Sea Scrolls to Gutenberg

This Exhibit begins May 2 and runs through Oc. You can get more info at www.culturalarts.org
I got to walk through it today and it is WAY COOL!

Ink & Blood: Dead Sea Scrolls to Gutenberg includes authentic Dead Sea Scrolls, the origins of written language and a working life-size reproduction of the most significant invention of the last millennium, Gutenberg's Printing Press with moveable type. Totaling more than 100 artifacts, the collection includes 5,000-year-old clay tablets, Hebrew Torahs, ancient Greek texts, Medieval Latin manuscripts, original pages from Gutenberg’s Bible, and rare English printed Bibles. Centerpieces of the exhibition are the live theatrical demonstration at the replica of Gutenberg's printing press and a dramatic, educational gallery of Dead Sea Scrolls. Ink & Blood: Dead Sea Scrolls to Gutenberg is the largest collection ever assembled to chronicle Western Civilization as seen through one of its most prominent and carefully preserved objets d’art—the Hebrew, Latin and English Bible.

The Origins of Writing
Writing began as pictures more than 5000 years ago in ancient Sumer or what is now modern-day Iraq. The oldest known examples of writing incorporate a pictographic script dated before 3000 B.C., called proto-cuneiform. This primitive script soon developed into a syllabic language, called Cuneiform. Ink & Blood displays four proto-cuneiform tablets dating to 3200 B.C. and five cuneiform tablets dating from 2000 B.C.-1500 B.C.

The Gutenberg Printing PressDuring the dark and middle ages, books were expensive to produce and therefore very rare. A Medieval Bible required the skins of 50 to 70 sheep for parchment and took nearly a year to copy the text. The employment of artists and use of colored inks only added to the expense. In the middle of the 15th century, Johann Gutenberg of Mainz, Germany advanced Western Civilization immeasurably with the development of the printing press with movable type. In the first 50 years of printing in Europe after Gutenberg, known as incunabula printing, 15-20 million books were printed. As a result, the masses became educated and birthed an educated middle-class. Ink & Blood presents authentic leaves from Gutenberg’s original Bible, leaves from the Fust & Schoeffer Bible (1462) and a working replica of Gutenberg’s printing press where daily demonstrations are presented. At the turn of the century, Gutenberg’s invention was recognized as the greatest invention of the past millennium. Ink & Blood’s collection spans 5,000 years creating a unique perspective on the growth of Western Civilization. With Dead Sea Scrolls, pages from Gutenberg’s Bible, rare printed Bibles, and more than one-hundred other artifacts, Ink & Blood links thousands of years of growth in the Western world preserved through the ink of the scribes and printers and the blood of martyrs. But more than just a preservation, these artifacts reveal the growth of education and the inevitable new experiment in democracy—America.

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