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Well ancient and pristinely preserved do not really usually go together... but Villa Papyri, near Pompeii, almost gets you there. The villa's name derives from
by matco11 8y ago
Well ancient and pristinely preserved do not really usually go together... but Villa Papyri, near Pompeii, almost gets you there.
The villa's name derives from the discovery of its library, the only surviving library from the Graeco-Roman world that exists in its entirety.
It contains over 1,800 papyrus scrolls.
The scrolls are coarbonized and rolled up, but each scroll gets very slowly unrolled, read, studied and preserved in the National Library in Naples.
With the use of new technologies the analysis of the scrolls is becoming faster and allowing the recover more and more of the works. It’s possible to go visit both the ruins of the villa and the scrolls.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Villa_of_the_Papyri https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Villa_of_the_Papyri
- singularity2001 8y agoThe linked methods don't look promising (yet) https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms6895 https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms6895
- comex 8y agoSee also https://arxiv.org/abs/1706.09883 https://arxiv.org/abs/1706.09883 which is a newer paper using the same imaging method (X-ray phase-contrast tomography) plus an algorithm to separate the rolled-up layers from the 3D scan data. Results are better, though still far from being able to decode substantial portions of text. edit: I also found an article in Smithsonian Magazine from just last month, about someone else's even more recent attempts: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/buried-ash-vesuvius-scrolls-are-being-read-new-xray-technique-180969358/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/buried-ash-vesuvius-s...