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| Mount Vesuvius today |
By Amina Khan
Excerpt from latimes.com
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| Researchers Daniel Delattre, left, and Emmanuel Brun observe the scroll before X-ray phase contrast imaging begins. (J. Delattre) |
The findings, described in the journal Nature
Communications, give hope to researchers who have until now been unable
to read these delicate scrolls without serious risk of destroying them.
The
scrolls come from a library in Herculaneum, one of several Roman towns
that, along with Pompeii, was destroyed when Mt. Vesuvius erupted in AD
79. This library, a small room in a large villa, held hundreds of
handwritten papyrus scrolls that had been carbonized from a furnace-like
blast of 608-degree-Fahrenheit gas produced by the volcano.
“This
rich book collection, consisting principally of Epicurean philosophical
texts, is a unique cultural treasure, as it is the only ancient library
to survive together with its books,” the study authors wrote. “The
texts preserved in these papyri, now mainly stored in the Officina dei
Papiri in the National Library of Naples, had been unknown to scholars
before the discovery of the Herculaneum library, since they had not been
copied and recopied in late Antiquity, the middle ages and
Renaissance.”
So
researchers have tried every which way to read these rare and valuable
scrolls, which could open a singular window into a lost literary past.
The problem is, these scrolls are so delicate that it’s nearly
impossible to unroll them without harming them. That hasn’t kept other
researchers from trying, however – sometimes successfully, and sometimes
not.
“Different opening techniques, all less effective, have been
tried over the years until the so-called ‘Oslo method’ was applied in
the 1980s on two Herculaneum scrolls now in Paris with problematic
results, since the method required the rolls to be picked apart into
small pieces,” the study authors wrote. (Yikes.)
Any further
attempts to physically open these scrolls were called off since then,
they said, “because an excessive percentage of these ancient texts was
irretrievably lost by the application of such methods.”
This
is where a technique like X-ray computed tomography, which could
penetrate the rolled scrolls, would come in handy. The problem is, the
ancient writers used ink made of carbon pulled from smoke residue. And
because the papyrus had been carbonized from the blazing heat, both
paper and ink are made of roughly the same stuff. Because the soot-based
ink and baked paper have about the same density, until now it’s been
practically impossible to tell ink and paper apart.
But a team led
by Vito Mocella of the Institute for Microelectronics and Microsystems
in Naples, Italy, realized they could use a different technique called
X-ray phase-contrast tomography. Unlike the standard X-ray CT scans,
X-ray phase-contrast tomography examines phase shifts in the X-ray light
as it passes through different structures.
Using the technique, the scientists were able to make out a few words and letters from two scrolls, one of them still rolled.
Reading
these scrolls is difficult; computer reconstructions of the rolled
scroll reveal that the blast of volcanic material so damaged its
once-perfect whorls that its cross section looks like a half-melted
tree-ring pattern. The paper inside has been thoroughly warped, and some
of the letters on the paper probably distorted almost beyond
recognition.
Nonetheless,
the researchers were able to read a number of words and letters, which
were about 2 to 3 millimeters in size. On an unrolled fragment of a
scroll called “PHerc.Paris. 1,” they were able to make up the words for
“would fall” and “would say.” In the twisted, distorted layers of the
rolled-up papyrus called “PHerc.Paris. 4,” they could pick out
individual letters: alpha, nu, eta, epsilon and others.
The
letters in “PHerc.Paris. 4” are also written in a distinctive style with
certain decorative flourishes that seemed very similar to a scroll
called “PHerc. 1471,” which holds a text written by the Epicurean
philosopher Philodemus. The researchers think they were written in the
second quarter of the first century BC.
Ultimately, the researchers wrote, this work was a
proofof concept to give other researchers a safe and reliable way to
explore ancient philosophical works that were until now off-limits to
them.
Source Article from http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/AscensionEarth2012/~3/ioXVBOi6Uy8/using-x-rays-scientists-read-2000-year.html
Using X-rays, scientists read 2,000 year old scrolls charred by Mount Vesuvius
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