![]() The trouble is that papyri at the time were written using a carbon-based ink, making it especially hard to digitally tease out the words on the carbonized scrolls. But those scans weren't sensitive enough to detect any lettering. From that data the team estimated that the scrolls would be between 36 and 49 feet long if they could be fully unwound. Micro-CT scans of two rolled scrolls revealed their interior structure-a mass of delicate whorls akin to a fingerprint. What's more, the brute-force techniques usually left some pages stuck together, trapping hidden layers and their precious contents.įrom 2007 to 2012, Seales collaborated with Daniel Delattre at the French National Center for Scientific Research in Paris on a project to scan scrolls in the collections of the Institut de France-former treasures of Napoleon Bonaparte, who received them as a gift from the King of Naples in 1802. "Ironically, when someone opened up a scroll, they would write on a separate sheet what they could read, like a facsimile, and the original ink, once exposed to air, would start to fade," says Brent Seales, a computer scientist at the University of Kentucky who specializes in digital imaging. And once a page was unveiled, readability suffered. Figuring out their exact origins will be no small feat-in addition to the volcano, mechanical or chemical techniques for opening the scrolls did their share of damage, sometimes breaking the delicate objects into fragments or destroying them outright. Modern scholars debate whether the scrolls were part of Philodemus' personal collection dating to his time period, or whether they were mostly copies made in the first century A.D. in what is now Jordan, Philodemus studied at the Epicurean school in Athens and became a prominent teacher and interpreter of the philosopher's ideas. that promoted pleasure as the main goal of life, but in the form of living modestly, foregoing fear of the afterlife and learning about the natural world. Epicurus was a Greek philosopher who developed a school of thought in the third century B.C. Most of the scrolls that have been unwrapped so far are Epicurean philosophical texts written by Philodemus-prose and poetry that had been lost to modern scholars until the library was found. "The prospect of getting hundreds of books more is staggering." "Anybody who focuses on the ancient world is always going to be excited to get even one paragraph, one chapter, more," says Roger Macfarlane, a classicist at Brigham Young University in Utah. ![]() Now, more than 200 years later, archaeologists examining two of the scrolls have found a way to peer inside them with x-rays and read text that has been lost since antiquity. Some could be mechanically unrolled, but hundreds remain too fragile to make the attempt, looking like nothing more than clubs of charcoal. Further digs showed that the scrolls were part of an extensive library, earning the structure the name Villa of the Papyri.īlackened and warped by the volcanic event, the roughly 1,800 scrolls found so far have been a challenge to read. ![]() During excavations there in 1752, diggers found a villa containing bundles of rolled scrolls, carbonized by the intense heat of the pyroclastic flows and preserved under layers of cement-like rock. The tumbling clouds of ash also entombed the nearby resort of Herculaneum, which is filled with its own wonders. The 79 A.D. eruption of Mount Vesuvius is most famous for burying Pompeii, spectacularly preserving many artifacts-and residents-in that once bustling town south of Naples. The estate's library was stocked with texts by prominent thinkers of the day, in particular a wealth of volumes by the philosopher Philodemus, an instructor of the poet Virgil.īut the seaside library also sat in the shadow of a volcano that was about to make terrible history. The lavish villa sat overlooking the Bay of Naples, offering bright ocean views to the well-heeled Romans who came from across the empire to study.
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