Img. ID: 9331
The scroll is formed of 3 membranes with 12 text columns containing 31 lines.
The text is inscribed in an Italian square script, in a ha-melech layout.
The IM possesses a similar scroll - Ms. 182/25; its opening decoration is clearly based on the Gaster I scrolls. Another exemplar possibly executed by the same artist is stored in the museum of the B'rit Kodesh community in Rochester (NY).
The signs of the Zodiac depicted in the scroll allude to casting lots by Haman (Es. 3:7).
The symbols of Israeli Tribes (Nu. 2, 10) only rarely were incorporated in the ornamentation of megillot Esther.
Lory Friedfertig (p. 36, see "Bibliography") suggests that both motifs - the signs of Zodiac and Israeli Tribes - are present in the 17th-century ketubbah of Venice and that the artist of the scroll must be familiar with it.
Isaiah Shachar, Jewish Tradition in Art. The Feuchtwanger Collection of Judaica, Jerusalem (The Israel Museum) 1981, p. 156, object 410.
A similar scroll is discussed by Lory Friedfertig, From Darkness to Light. Discovering the Judaica Museum of Temple B'rit Kodesh, Rochester (?) n.d., pp. 32-37.