Researchers Validate Lead-Ink Screening for Herculaneum Scrolls

The scrolls are badly charred, 2,000-year-old papyri that are too fragile to be physically unrolled. To test the screening method, the researchers created their own contemporary model papyrus scrolls and charred them just like the originals. They described the process in the PLoS ONE paper.

The ancient Roman resort town of Pompeii was not the only city destroyed in the catastrophic eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD. Several other cities in the area, including the wealthy enclave of Herculaneum, were struck by clouds of hot gas known as pyroclastic pulses and flows. Some remnants of Roman wealth survived.

One palatial residence in Herculaneum, believed to have once belonged to a man named Piso, contained hundreds of priceless written scrolls made from papyrus, singed into carbon by volcanic gas. The scrolls stayed buried under volcanic mud until they were excavated in the 1700s from a single room. Archaeologists believe that room held the personal working library of an Epicurean philosopher named Philodemus.

A few opened fragments helped scholars identify various Greek philosophical texts, including On Nature by Epicurus and several by Philodemus himself, as well as a handful of Latin works. But more than 600 rolled-up scrolls were so fragile that it was long believed they would never be readable, since even touching them could cause them to crumble.

The new screening method is intended to determine which of the Herculaneum scrolls were written in lead-based ink, and therefore are the most promising candidates for further analysis. The Vesuvius Challenge continues to pursue digital unwrapping and crowdsourced machine learning as ways to decipher the texts without opening them.