Unrolling the Herculaneum Scrolls

The eruption of Mount Vesuvius in A.D. 79 resulted in death, destruction and preservation. The famous Villa of the Papyri, a huge luxurious estate buried by the eruption and rediscovered and excavated in the mid 18th century, contained numerous ancient artworks. However, the greatest treasure recovered from the site was/is a library of nearly 1,800 papyrus scrolls and the only library from antiquity to have survived. When Vesuvius erupted, the hot gases and ash burred the villa carbonizing the papyrus scrolls, transforming them into charred cylindrical lumps, burring them and ultimately preserving them. Though the papyri were preserved, their preservation created challenges. Carbonizing made them extremely fragile and the pressure from being burred under layers of ash compressed and deformed the scrolls. This made unrolling and reading them difficult and in most cases impossible, until recently. Early efforts were mostly destructive with unrolling involved peeling or scraping off the layers to read the text and in some cases, also slicing them up. Even when "unrolled," it was extremely difficult to read the black text written on the black carbonized papyri. Fortunately, because of the difficulties, many of the scrolls were simply left unrolled, as they were recovered. Tantalizing curiosities.

Today we now have imaging technologies and techniques to finally read the scrolls, some of which are non-destructive.

An article in Archaeology discusses some of the new scanning and digital methods for virtually unrolling and reading the scrolls.

Herculaneum Scrolls

Another article from Today in Science discusses new chemical process which might allow the scrolls to be physically unrolled.

Opening the Herculaneum Scrolls

A link to video showing information about the project and how the process worked.

A CHANCE TO OPEN THE HERCULANEUM SCROLLS ?

This chemical process may hold promise in helping to preserve the fragile fragments and make them more user-friendly, especially, since the sections and fragments of unrolled scrolls continue to deteriorate. However, the digital and new scanning processes are much more versatile, not-to-mention, more importantly, non-destructive.

Edited

Back in 2019, I was fortunate enough to attend a talk on the subject by Vito Mocello of the Italian National Council of Research. Fascinating stuff, and very exciting.

A CHANCE TO OPEN THE HERCULANEUM SCROLLS ?

This link actually goes to an ad for Outlook email. Not sure which one you were linking to, but there are several on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=herculaneum+scrolls

Good candidate for a Legacy Library..