Advances in Reading the Herculaneum Scrolls

[Minimalist]

Slowly for certain.

http://popular-archaeology.com/issue/sum...unreadable

Now, Vito Mocella, who is an expert in condensed matter physics and electromagnetism, and Papyrologist Daniel Delattre, have joined forces to make the scrolls legible again. Using their expertise and the help of the synchrotron particle accelerator, they are slowly on their way to more easily deciphering the scrolls once and for all, using the noninvasive technique (see the video below).

The included video is 8 minutes long.

[vorlon13]

Didn't watch the video, but the info in the article is very informative.

Carbon ink on a carbonized parchment will most likely never be legible. But metallic ink, that be different. There is certainly a very real possibility of reading those scrolls.

What a wonderful announcement !!

[abaris]

Wow, I was waiting for them to start making head or tails of them for years. Can't wait for the first actual texts to resurface.

[Alex K]

What is their significance? Herculaneum was a city destroyed alongside Pompei, no?

Edit: forget it I overlooked the link to the article on me phone. Very cool. Do they have expectations what to find? Some long lost greek stuff maybe?

[abaris]

What is their significance?

The major significance is that it's a villa filled to the brim with ancient scrolls. An ancient library of sorts. The possible sensation lies in what these scrolls actually hold. Maybe some long lost works of classic authors, maybe something to shed new light on classic history, or maybe just some kitchen lists and inventories.

[The Viking]

I love history and spend most of my time living unashamedly in the long distant past.

I've always said, if someone created a theme park for me with a huge historically accurate set piece of life based around the Viking time and populated it with other people willing to suspend their disbelief and live as historically accurately as possible, I'd do that for the rest of my life.

I'd even be willing to give up the Internet to do it.

[abaris]

I love history and spend most of my time living unashamedly in the long distant past.

I've always said, if someone created a theme park for me with a huge historically accurate set piece of life based around the Viking time and populated it with other people willing to suspend their disbelief and live as historically accurately as possible, I'd do that for the rest of my life.

I'd even be willing to give up the Internet to do it.

I'm not sure, if I really wanted to live the past, with all strings attached. The Vikings didn't exactly live in fairy land, after all and the first winter would probably kill us. I wouldn't even want to live the life of a wealthy Roman or Greek, given that I'm long past the sell by date of the time.

But I share your interest in history. Even as a child I spent hours exploring medieval and Roman ruins, trying to figure out how these people actually lived. How things might have looked like when these buildings were full of life.

[Alex K]

What is their significance?

The major significance is that it's a villa filled to the brim with ancient scrolls. An ancient library of sorts. The possible sensation lies in what these scrolls actually hold. Maybe some long lost works of classic authors, maybe something to shed new light on classic history, or maybe just some kitchen lists and inventories.

I'd take a kitchen list, too. In a way, I find these documents of ordinary daily life more fascinating than official documents or writings, because they let these long gone times appear much more real - some guy writing a shopping list 2000 years ago gives me a direct connection to real human beings and their concerns. For example, one of the things that left the biggest impression on me in the Forum Romanum was not the monumental architecture, but the marble game that had been etched into the stairs of the Basilica Iulia. Someone did that - who knows who he or she was - bored and in need of a board game.

[abaris]

I'd take a kitchen list, too. In a way, I find these documents of ordinary daily life more fascinating than official documents or writings, because they let these long gone times appear much more real - some guy writing a shopping list 2000 years ago gives me a direct connection to real human beings and their concerns. For example, one of the things that left the biggest impression on me in the Forum Romanum was not the monumental architecture, but the marble game that had been etched into the stairs of the Basilica Iulia. Someone did that - who knows who he or she was - bored and in need of a board game.

And we have all of this. The Graffiti of Pompeij, which, apart from being refreshingly vulgar at times, also show that political campaigns weren't that different back then. We also have the letters of Vindolanda, showing that these people had very familar concerns. Such as the wish for being sent warm socks or the invitation to a birthday party.

This however is on an entirely different level. I'm not entirely familar with the layout of this villa, but it was either a public library or the pet project of some very wealthy man. In both cases, chances are that it contains a treasure trove of knowledge, since a collection of this size didn't come cheap.

[Alex K]

Some lost work or other of Sophocles would be nice