Researchers, with interest in the ancient world, have edged closer to unraveling the secrets in old scrolls that people have not been able to read since 1752. The scrolls were preserved in the ancient Roman town of Herculaneum. The town was destroyed by superhot ashes in the 79 A.D. volcanic eruption of Mount Vesuvius, which also left thousands of people dead.
A team of researchers led by Italian Vito Mocella reported in the Nature Communications that they have found a way to read the ancient manuscripts that are about 2,000 years old. By using X-ray light, the scientists said they could read the scrolls without unrolling them.
Waiting for a better way to read the scrolls
The challenge in the past has been handling of the scrolls because they are too delicate to be subjected to physical unrolling without destroying them. Given the challenge of handling the scrolls, scientists left them intact hoping that someday a better way would be found to read them. In addition to the papyrus scrolls being delicate to handle manually, the writing ink used in them made it even more difficult for scientists to read the ancient documents because it was similar to the carbonized materials.
However, Mocella and his team believe that they have cracked the code in reading the scrolls. They say that X-ray light offers an opportunity to unravel the secrets in the ancient documents without destroying them. Even so, the X-ray technique discovered by Mocella and his team is still requires to be developed further to give better results. The researchers are currently doing that.
What is inside?
The scrolls are believed to contain the literature and histories of the ancient Rome and Greek. The scrolls could also reveal some historic information that may not be already known to man.
It is believed that the documents belonged to the father-in-law of Julius Caesar known as Lucius Calpurnius Piso Caesoninus.
In 1752, researchers discovered 300 intact scrolls alongside some other fragments. However, it is believed that some more ancient documents are still buried below where the 1752 library discovery was made. If that is true, the breakthrough X-ray technique is expected to help in examining the documents.