Beyond Two Scribes? Column-based Writer Identification in the 1QIsaa Scroll

The 1QIsaa Scroll, one of the most significant manuscripts among the Dead Sea Scrolls, has long been the focus of debate over whether it was produced by a single hand or multiple scribes. In this study, we introduce a column-based writer-identification framework that combines unsupervised clustering, character-level verification, and cross-dataset evaluation, without assuming any fixed number of scribes. Benchmarking our hinge–feature–based approach against the widely recognized FIREMAKER dataset reveals its strengths and weaknesses. This exploratory analysis not only offers fresh insights into 1QIsaa’s scribal attribution but also underscores the need for richer or complementary features in future digital paleographic research.