High Tech, Old Papyrus
Recovering the ancients
The people of Herculaneum hardly had a chance. In the early-morning August darkness of A.D. 79, the rumbling volcano belched a river of mud and ash, burying the terrified residents and one of the Roman Empire's most luxurious communities under 75 feet of debris.
Entombed along with the unlucky citizens was one of the empire's premier philosophy libraries. Ironically, the disaster that buried Herculaneum and neighboring Pompeii actually preserved the collection of some 1,500 papyrus scrolls for almost 2,000 years. Badly charred, compressed by tons of rock, and damaged by water, the fragile scrolls are largely unreadable to the naked eye. But thanks to space-age technology, classics scholars are finally getting a look at the long-lost lectures and commentaries.
Charcoal sticks. First uncovered during excavations in 1752, the papyrus scrolls were so badly burned they resembled little more than sticks of charcoal. Indeed, early attempts to unroll and read the documents destroyed at least a third of each scroll. And until recently, studying the scrolls was a painstaking struggle with magnifying glasses and microscopes.
This changed last year when Brigham Young University scientists used multispectral imaging to examine the scrolls. Developed by NASA to photograph planets from space, the technique filters out different wavelengths of light to reveal images and patterns invisible to the naked eye. So far, the researchers have made more than 23,000 digital images of the scrolls, which are confirming that the library is an archaeological treasure.
Much of the collection consists of the writings and lectures of Philodemus of Gadara, who lived from about 110 to 30 B.C. and was one of ancient Italy's pre-eminent philosophers. An Epicurean, he believed that refined intellectual pleasure was the highest goal in life. But what may prove most illuminating are Philodemus's many critiques of his intellectual foes. These, and the detailed summaries of their arguments (including the only surviving discussion of Aristotle's Poetics), make Philodemus's library a critical window on the ancient world.
The story of the Herculaneum scrolls is far from over. Most of the villas remain buried under the modern Italian town of Ercolano. The massive villa where Philodemus's scrolls were found is still largely unexcavated, and many archaeologists are convinced that another, larger library lies somewhere below. Says classics professor David Armstrong of the University of Texas-Austin: "If you were going to recover all the lost literary works of antiquity in one place, this is your best chance."
This story appears in the April 9, 2001 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.
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