When Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 AD, it buried not only Pompeii but also the neighboring city of Herculaneum under a massive cloud of volcanic ash. This catastrophe froze one of the ancient world's most significant treasures: a vast library of thousands of papyrus scrolls, transformed into carbonized lumps of charcoal. To read these fragile remains without shattering them, scientists from UC Berkeley have turned to an unusual method: creating their own papyri and burning them in an oven.
Artificial Carbonization and the X-ray Breakthrough
Researcher Douglas Seiler and his team created replicas of the ancient scrolls by carbonizing modern papyri, sourced from Egypt and prepared with traditional inks, in high-temperature ovens [1]. The primary goal of this experiment was to measure how metallic traces in the ink respond to X-ray scans. According to results published in the journal PLOS ONE, even minute amounts of lead in the ink absorb X-rays 25 times more effectively than the paper, causing the letters to light up 'like a Christmas tree' [2].
Digitally Unrolling History
The greatest challenge with ancient scrolls is that they crumble into black dust when any attempt is made to physically unroll them. By modifying a specialized algorithm originally developed to inspect the internal structure of lithium-ion batteries, the Berkeley team successfully 'peeled' the carbonized layers one by one in a digital environment [3]. Thanks to this method, the writing inside the scrolls becomes legible on a computer screen without any physical intervention.
The majority of the approximately 1,800 scrolls found in the Herculaneum library remain a mystery. In the few examples that have been physically opened so far, previously unknown works by the Epicurean philosopher Philodemus were discovered. This new technology could remove the final barrier to bringing thousands of pages of lost literature from the intellectual world of ancient Rome from the library shelves into the digital age.
Sources and further reading
- [1] To read 2,000-year-old burned scrolls, scientists burn their own - Berkeley News
- [2] Scientists burn their own scrolls to help read 2,000-year-old Herculaneum papyri | Archaeology News Online Magazine
- [3] Scientists burned their own scrolls to unlock a 2,000-year-old mystery | ScienceDaily
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