First 'virtual' unrolling of ancient scroll buried by Vesuvius reveals early text

[rangerrebew]

First 'virtual' unrolling of ancient scroll buried by Vesuvius reveals early text
7/03/2017 08:00:00 PM Email


In AD 79, Mount Vesuvius erupted violently, spewing pyroclastic flows across the Roman cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum. The eruption has become one of the most famous in history because the speed of the hot gases caught the locals unawares. The intense heat captured many features of city life, including individuals as macabre still-lifes. Much of this detail was then preserved beneath huge volumes of ash that rained down on the region.

One of the discoveries made in 1752 in Herculaneum was of an intact library. This contained large numbers of papyrus scrolls of philosophical texts, many associated with the Epicurean philosopher Philodemus of Gadara.

Read more at https://archaeologynewsnetwork.blogspot.com/2017/07/first-virtual-unrolling-of-ancient.html#hGHqq65DAMxTDD9B.99

[SunkenCiv]

The first unrolling was over a century ago, and basically destroyed the scroll.

For our next trick, we're going to unroll another one.  Then another.  Then another.

It would have been much better if they stupid bastards had just left the whole pile of scrolls the hell alone.

The only upside to this 150 year fiasco is, the books have been found to be (IMHO) of very little value.  Imagine for a moment that the first one anyone was ever able to read had turned out to be a lost work by, say, the Emperor Claudius, or some lost play.  The nitwits would have really been fired up, and by 1900 there would have just been an empty box and a pile of dust.

[Smokin Joe]

The first unrolling was over a century ago, and basically destroyed the scroll.

For our next trick, we're going to unroll another one.  Then another.  Then another.

It would have been much better if they stupid bastards had just left the whole pile of scrolls the hell alone.

The only upside to this 150 year fiasco is, the books have been found to be (IMHO) of very little value.  Imagine for a moment that the first one anyone was ever able to read had turned out to be a lost work by, say, the Emperor Claudius, or some lost play.  The nitwits would have really been fired up, and by 1900 there would have just been an empty box and a pile of dust.

It was indeed fortunate that they knew enough to quit. This technique doesn't actually unroll the papyrus, but instead uses imaging software to make an image and virtually flatten the computer image of the scroll to try to find text or even the indentations caused by a stylus. They're constantly updating the technique, but the only hazard to the actual scrolls is the (likely very careful) handling to get the images, and not from physically unrolling them.

[SunkenCiv]

It was indeed fortunate that they knew enough to quit.

They didn't know enough to quit, that's the point. I had the date wrong, this started more than 200 years ago, but continued for about 150 years.

[snip] It is uncertain how many papyri were originally found as many of the scrolls were destroyed by workmen or when scholars extracted them from the volcanic tuff. The official list amounts to 1,814 rolls and fragments, of which 1,756 had been discovered by 1855. The inventory now comprises 1826 papyri. More than 340 are almost complete, about 970 are partly decayed and partly decipherable, and more than 500 are merely charred fragments... By the middle of the 20th century, only 585 rolls or fragments had been completely unrolled, and 209 unrolled in part. Of the unrolled papyri, about 200 had been deciphered and published, and about 150 only deciphered. [/snip] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herculaneum_papyri

Basically, had they just left them alone...

Compare this with the Oxyrhynchus papyri fragments, which have a similar blackened appearance, but were not carbonized.  They couldn't be reliably read and transcribed until recently, when different spectra and enabling technology was used.  The dry conditions of the ancient Egyptian trash dump had preserved 400,000 fragments.  Unknown fragments of plays by Sophocles and Euripides, New Testament fragments, and poetry from as far back as the 7th c BC has been identified.  Should be an interesting few decades of work to come.

[Smokin Joe]

They didn't know enough to quit, that's the point. I had the date wrong, this started more than 200 years ago, but continued for about 150 years.

[snip] It is uncertain how many papyri were originally found as many of the scrolls were destroyed by workmen or when scholars extracted them from the volcanic tuff. The official list amounts to 1,814 rolls and fragments, of which 1,756 had been discovered by 1855. The inventory now comprises 1826 papyri. More than 340 are almost complete, about 970 are partly decayed and partly decipherable, and more than 500 are merely charred fragments... By the middle of the 20th century, only 585 rolls or fragments had been completely unrolled, and 209 unrolled in part. Of the unrolled papyri, about 200 had been deciphered and published, and about 150 only deciphered. [/snip] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herculaneum_papyri

Basically, had they just left them alone...

Compare this with the Oxyrhynchus papyri fragments, which have a similar blackened appearance, but were not carbonized.  They couldn't be reliably read and transcribed until recently, when different spectra and enabling technology was used.  The dry conditions of the ancient Egyptian trash dump had preserved 400,000 fragments.  Unknown fragments of plays by Sophocles and Euripides, New Testament fragments, and poetry from as far back as the 7th c BC has been identified.  Should be an interesting few decades of work to come.

It makes you wonder how many more may still be buried in other caches.