These scrolls and hundreds of others were carbonized when Mount Vesuvius erupted back in AD 79, researchers explain

Jan 21, 2015 09:02 GMT  ·  By

Nearly 2,000 years ago, in AD 79, Mount Vesuvius in the Gulf of Naples, Italy, erupted and wiped out the towns of Pompeii and Herculaneum. In a nutshell, these two ancient settlements were buried under a thick layer of volcanic ash.

Come 1752, archaeologists exploring the remains of the town of Herculaneum stumbled upon an ancient library that was pretty much obliterated at the time of the eruption. Inside this library, they found hundreds of papyrus scrolls.

The scrolls were almost completely burnt in the eruption

These scrolls, one of which is featured in the photo below, were nearly destroyed by the hot gases and the volcanic ash that engulfed Herculaneum in AD 79. In fact, researchers say that they now look kind of like burnt logs.

The thing is that, as it turns out, the old Latin proverb that “Verba volant, scripta manent” (“Spoken words fly away, written words remain”) is true even when it comes to words written down on scrolls deep fried by volcanic eruptions.

Thus, a recent paper in the journal Nature Communications details how, using X-rays, researchers managed to decipher some of these burnt papyrus scrolls discovered at the site of the ancient town of Herculaneum. Pretty cool, right?

How X-rays helped decipher the carbonized scrolls

In the Nature Communications report detailing their work, scientist Vito Mocella with the Institute of Microelectronics and Microsystems in Naples and fellow researchers explain that, to read the scrolls, they turned to a technique known as X-ray phase contrast tomography.

Simply put, the researchers fired X-rays at the burnt scrolls and then documented how the radiation moved through them. Because X-rays pass differently through papyrus, ink and various others substances, the scientists were able to zoom in on individual letters and even words.

These letters were then compared to the handwriting on other Herculaneum scrolls. It was thus discovered that one of the texts had been put together by a scribe writing in the 1st century BC and was most likely a copy of one of the works of Philodemus, an ancient poet and philosopher.

Interestingly enough, the X-ray phase contract tomography technique that Vito Mocella and colleagues used to make sense of some of the ancient scrolls recovered from under the volcanic ash that wiped out Herculaneum and Pompeii millennia ago was first developed for use in medicine.

Specifically, this technique emerged in an attempt to make it easier for medical experts to study the brain, the lungs and other organs that do not absorb X-rays all that well by documenting how they refract this type of radiation. In the case of the scrolls, the technique served to identify inked letters.

Hundreds of other scrolls are waiting to be read

As mentioned, the Herculaneum library that was unearthed by archaeologists back in 1752 was found to hold not one or two, but hundreds of carbonized papyrus scrolls. Truth be told, it would have hardly deserved being called a library if this were not the case.

Researcher Vito Mocella and colleagues might have successfully deciphered some of these ancient texts, but the fact of the matter is that they have plenty of work left to do. Thus, the scientists hope to find a way to automate the process of reading the scrolls using X-rays and one day decipher all of them.

“Here for the first time, we show that X-ray phase-contrast tomography can reveal various letters hidden inside the precious papyri without unrolling them. This attempt opens up new opportunities to read many Herculaneum papyri, which are still rolled up, thus enhancing our knowledge of ancient Greek literature and philosophy,” the scientists say.

One of the scrolls deciphered using X-rays
One of the scrolls deciphered using X-rays

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Photo shows the remains of the town of Pompeii
One of the scrolls deciphered using X-rays
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