VISUAL ARTS

Take a journey back 5,000 years to trace the written history of our existence as it was preserved through the ink of scribes and the blood of martyrs. THE WORD: Ink & Blood making its first ever west coast debut, is the world’s largest, most comprehensive exhibition on the history of the Bible and the origins of written language. This unprecedented collection of artifacts, which includes authentic Dead Sea Scroll fragments, ancient biblical manuscripts and 5,000-year-old pictographic clay tablets from ancient Mesopotamia, opens February 3, 2012 at MUZEO in downtown Anaheim.

“This is a landmark exhibit; relevant to anyone who treasures history, and especially those in the religious community,” states John Scola, MUZEO executive director. “Our visitors from throughout the region will have the rare opportunity to see and experience how the modern English Bible evolved from ancient Hebrew text and learn how so many fought and died for the Bible – the most widely read document in the world,” he concluded.

Totaling more than 100 artifacts, in addition to the Dead Sea Scroll fragments and 5,000-year- old clay tablets, the collection includes Hebrew Torahs, ancient Greek texts, Medieval Latin manuscripts, original pages from Gutenberg’s Bible and rare English printed Bibles. The exhibition also includes a working life-size reproduction of the most significant invention of the last millennium, Gutenberg’s Printing Press with moveable type. Live demonstrations of the printing press are planned as part of the exhibition experience.

The Dead Sea Scrolls are the centerpiece of the exhibit featuring four pieces of the Scrolls recovered from Cave 4 in Qumran with text from the books of Genesis, Deuteronomy, Isaiah, and Jeremiah. In addition to the Scroll fragments themselves, the collection includes the entire contents of a 1st Century B.C. cave. The Scrolls are only part of the history THE WORD: Ink & Blood traces. Origins of the written language which began as pictures more than 5000 years ago in ancient Sumer or what is now modern-day Iraq are a centerpiece of the exhibition. The oldest known examples of writing incorporate a pictographic script dated before 3000 B.C. called protocuneiform. This primitive script soon developed into a syllabic language, called Cuneiform. THE WORD: Ink & Blood displays four proto-cuneiform tablets dating to 3200 B.C. and five cuneiform tablets dating from 200 B.C.-1500 B.C.