Interior of Burnt Herculaneum Scroll Read For First Time 66
New submitter Solandri writes: When Mt. Vesuvius erupted in A.D. 79, it destroyed a library of classical works in Herculaneum. The papyrus scrolls weren't incinerated, but were instead carbonized by the hot gases. The resulting black carbon cylinders have mostly withstood attempts to read their contents since their discovery. Earlier attempts to unfurl the scrolls yielded some readable material, but were judged too destructive. Researchers decided to wait for newer technology to be invented that could read the scrolls without unrolling them.
Now, a team led by Dr. Vito Mocella from the National Research Council's Institute for Microelectronics and Microsystems (CNR-IMM) in Naples, Italy has managed to read individual letters inside one of the scrolls. Using a form of x-ray phase contrast tomography (abstract), they were able to ascertain the height difference (about 0.1mm) between the ink of the letters and the papyrus fibers which they sat upon. Due to the fibrous nature of the papyrus and the carbon-based ink, regular spectral and chemical analysis had thus far been unable to distinguish the ink from the paper. Further complicating the work, the scrolls are not in neat cylinders, but squashed and ruffled as the hot gases vaporized water in the papyrus and distorted the paper.
Now, a team led by Dr. Vito Mocella from the National Research Council's Institute for Microelectronics and Microsystems (CNR-IMM) in Naples, Italy has managed to read individual letters inside one of the scrolls. Using a form of x-ray phase contrast tomography (abstract), they were able to ascertain the height difference (about 0.1mm) between the ink of the letters and the papyrus fibers which they sat upon. Due to the fibrous nature of the papyrus and the carbon-based ink, regular spectral and chemical analysis had thus far been unable to distinguish the ink from the paper. Further complicating the work, the scrolls are not in neat cylinders, but squashed and ruffled as the hot gases vaporized water in the papyrus and distorted the paper.
Primum scribee / first post (Score:5, Funny)
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More likely 'pmirum scirbe'
Re:Primum scribee / first post (Score:5, Funny)
Odd. I thought the recovered text started Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet.
Re: Primum scribee / first post (Score:5, Funny)
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L... [wikipedia.org]
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Re:Primum scribee / first post (Score:5, Funny)
The scrolls were found to contain long-winded, mostly irrational arguments regarding the contents of another (unseen) scroll.
They need to set the x-ray phase contrast imaging device to scan at -1 to see hidden scrolls...
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They also contained the only known full and complete edition of "The Lusty Oplontian Maid."
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You're not going back far enough.
The most recent scroll has only a small fragment deciphered so far.
It says "Move 'ZIG'".
Re:The only readable phrase so far (Score:5, Funny)
They called it being "Rick Scrolled" back then.
They found something else. (Score:2)
One of the images they've recovered literally says "HEY".
No, really.
And they found... (Score:1)
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Modern ones are Much larger; I could provide a link if you'd like... :)
Re:And they found... (Score:5, Interesting)
... the oldest goatse in history.
They already found that: http://blogs.artinfo.com/artin... [artinfo.com]
"A statue of the Roman half-goat, half-man god Pan - who was the Greeks' god of the wild - getting wild with a female goat (see above) has proven so NSFW (or, in this case, NSFM) that the British Museum has placed a parental advisory in the gallery where it will be on view as part of the upcoming exhibition 'Life and Death in Pompeii and Herculaneum.' The statue was excavated from beneath some 100 feet of Volcanic ash that enveloped the Villa of the Papyri, the residence of Julius Caesar's father-in-law Lucius Calpurnius Piso Caesoninus, on the slope Mount Vesuvius."
Science Fiction as Fact... (Score:1)
There was a James P. Hogan story that involved reading a 50,000 year old book with such a scanner.
1978 or so, I think...
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SURE there was... And I bet they found it on the moon, too. Geez. Crazy talk.
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Only in the book they were using neutrinos, I think. Lotsa luck with that...
JPHogan's first book: Inherit the Stars (1977) (Score:3)
Big spoilers in Wikipedia beyond context: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G... [wikipedia.org]
"In the introduction to the omnibus edition The Two Moons, Hogan revealed that the first book, Inherit the Stars, was inspired by a viewing of the film 2001: A Space Odyssey, which he enjoyed until the ending. Complaining about what he saw as the confusing, effects-heavy conclusion at work afterwards, each of his colleagues bet him five pounds that he couldn't write and publish a science-fiction novel. The result was Inherit the Star
initial translation of the text (Score:5, Funny)
"If you don't copy this scroll and send it to ten people within the next 24 hours, you will die in a volcano eruption!"
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Elect that dude prez (Score:5, Interesting)
Wow, somebody actually planned ahead instead of dived in face first making a mess to get first publishing credit.
There is hope for (some of) humanity after all.
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It's fairly standard practise to leave stuff in the ground until better technology comes along, as far as archaeology goes.
This is incredibly exciting (Score:5, Informative)
Re:This is incredibly exciting (Score:5, Informative)
The New Testament is very common with 5,000 Greek copies (and all within 400 years of the events, some within 100 years). But after that it drops off quickly. There are 643 copies of Homer's Iliad, but the closest to his writing is over 500 years. There are only 20 copies of Tacitus, but the closest is 1,000 years later. We have only 7 copies of Plato and 5 of Aristotle.
All that to say we might find something incredibly significant in this library. Something we have never had before or something that is a much older copy of something that we already have against which we can check accuracy.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R... [wikipedia.org]
The narrow range for that fragment is 117 to 138 CE although it could be from prior to 100 CE or after 150 CE. Jesus's death was between 30 - 36 CE is the generally accepted range for the death. Within a 100 years of the event is not an unreasonable statement to make when it comes to the Gospels.
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It may be a bit more than exciting.
The historian/ linguist in me wants to read such scrolls. However, given what I know about those two towns I am expecting it to be something like...
You won't believe what happened to me yesterday I was just lounging around the atrium naked when my servant informed me there was a real hunk delivering pizza, not just one in fact, but twins...
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Most of the stuff Sophocles wrote isn't around anymore either. He supposedly wrote 123 plays of which 7 survived.
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It was fairly common to scrape the pages blank and write over the existing texts. In some cases fragments of the original texts can be retrieved, but obviously that's fairly hit and miss.
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That's much easier (typically only three layers of paper and the envelope, and not burnt), so yes.
Re:I wonder if the NSA has this technology (Score:4, Informative)
It's a shame ... (Score:3)
Water? (Score:1)
can't they just de-carbonize the scrolls? (Score:1)
Like they did to Han in Return of the Jedi?
And the scroll said... (Score:3)
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Earlier attempts to unfurl the scrolls yielded some readable material, but were judged too destructive.
unfurl. verb: to shake out from a furled state, as a sail or a flag
Maybe if they just tried to gently unroll them they might have had better luck.
Chakka, when the walls fell
Science. It works, (censored) (Score:2)
https://xkcd.com/54/ [xkcd.com]
When they succees in reading them... (Score:2)
...They'll probably discover that they are nothing more than a rich child's dirty limerick collection.
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Which is effectively what half of Shakespeare is...
Bonus! (Score:1)
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