ScienceNatureWatch scientists decipher burnt scrolls without unrolling them
Researchers have found a way to read ancient burnt scrolls from Herculaneum without unrolling them by detecting lead in the ink, potentially unlocking thousands of lost texts.
By making and burning their own papyrus, researchers have come up with a method that might help to read unopened ancient scrolls from Herculaneum.
Scientists have developed a method to read carbonized ancient scrolls from Herculaneum by detecting lead in the ink rather than carbon, published in the journal PLoS ONE.
The team recreated burned rolled papyri using papyrus and reed pens sourced from Egypt, then showed the lead-detection approach could distinguish ink from the papyrus itself.
More than 1,000 scrolls from the only complete ancient library ever found were carbonized by the eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79, and this method could help read them without causing damage.
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