After working
for more than 10 years on unlocking an ancient piece of history, what lies
inside damaged Herculaneum scrolls, University of Kentucky Department of
Computer Science researchers will accomplish the next step in allowing the
world to read the scrolls, which cannot be physically opened. A major
development in the venture, they are building software that will visualize the
scrolls' writings as they would be if unrolled. A breakthrough not only in
digital imaging techniques, the first-of-its-kind software could also have
profound impacts on history and literature. They say that each scroll may well
be the only remaining copy as of yet unknown literature from the Classical era.
Each scroll is 20 to 30 feet long and estimates each to contain at least 3,000
words.
The scrolls
aren't your typical 2,000-year old papyri manuscripts; they were carbonized in
the Mount Vesuvius volcanic eruption of A.D. 79, and later discovered as
charred clumps in the Villa of the Papyri in the ancient Italian city of
Herculaneum beginning in 1752. When attempting to open, the artifacts would
often shatter beyond repair. To reveal the works inside the remaining intact
scrolls, researchers from the Institut de France, knew that ‘virtual unrolling’
was the only way. After successfully creating 2D images of two Herculaneum
scrolls in 2009 but not being able to detect the ink in them, researchers believe
they have recently identified ink in the scrolls after applying an x-ray method
often used in the medical and archaeology communities.
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