Word: parchments
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...school board of Parchment, Mich, (pop. 1,500), near Kalamazoo, last week faced an astonishing dilemma. For $30,000 it must build either 1) two new classrooms at an overcrowded elementary school, or 2) a fancy band room at the brand-new Parchment High School. Why is the band room more important? Because the high school is not yet accredited by the North Central Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools-and apparently will not be without a band room...
...limestone cliffs, hiding their sacred writings in inaccessible caves. In 1947, a Bedouin shepherd boy crawled into one such cave, found the first of these writings: the famous Dead Sea Scrolls. Since then, Israeli archaeologists have watched in alarm as Bedouins haphazardly ransacked the caves for more fragments of parchment and papyrus, often sneaking across the Jordan border to rifle Israeli caves. Last week Israeli Archaeologist Yohanan Aharoni was about to start an all-out search of the remaining Israeli caves on a scholarly and scientific basis, organized with the full support of the Israeli government...
...Aharoni's assault on the caves started a month ago with a reconnaissance in force. Trigger was a report that Bedouins were getting scraps of parchment out of caves in the Wadi Saiyal, a five-mile-long canyon in Israel near the Jordanian border. In a light airplane Dr. Aharoni flew close to the wadi's cliffs, taking photographs and spotting the mouths of many caves. Then he recruited 28 amateur archaeologists from tough Israeli border settlements. His expedition moved into the wilderness with a military escort to discourage Arab guerrillas...
...Bedouins, but Aharoni found several that they had missed. Inside, the floors were foot-deep with bird droppings and dust, which rose in choking clouds around the explorers. In one, amidst the midden, was a vulture's nest. With unliterary impartiality, the vultures had used fragments of parchment to complete the nest. On one fragment 16 verses of the Book of Exodus were written in Hebrew script that was current in Jerusalem about 130 A.D. This and other evidence convinced Israeli scholars that the cave had been a refuge of last-ditch followers of the self-styled Messiah...
...Warriors is marred by the feeling that Philosopher Gray was more an observer than a participant. Though he writes of his own fears in combat, there is a curious parchment quality, underlined by a self-conscious literary style ("The great god Mars tries to blind us when we enter his realm"). Still, there are brilliant flashes: the appealing face of a young German deserter, smiling in death after being cut down from a tree where the SS had hanged him; the bewilderment and misery of French girls who had "collaborated" simply because they had fallen in love...