REPLYING TO a letter in the Spectator about science fiction
a few weeks ago, Alan Brien com- plained that his correspondent was behaving 'as if he had discovered SF, like the Dead Sea scrolls, in a jar in the basement of Foyles.' And much amusement was later obtained at the expense of some gullible readers who hurried round to Foyles and tried to buy copies of the Dead Sea scrolls in jars. Now I see that commerce is once again imitating art; replicas of the scrolls, and in jars too, are now in fact on sale in Foyles and other bookshops. The jar is made of brown clay in the traditional pattern and contains a three-foot-long reproduction of the most famous scroll, the Manual of Discipline. There is also a forty-page booklet translating the scroll and telling the story of its discovery. At 32s. 6d. I suppose that it will make an original and bizarre present. Will the next enterprise be replicas of Noah's tiller, David's sling and Moses' cradle?
PHAROS
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