BERLIN — Scientists have succeeded in reading parts of an ancient scroll that was buried in a volcanic eruption almost 2,000 years ago, holding out the promise that the world’s oldest surviving library may one day reveal all of its secrets.
The scroll is among hundreds retrieved from the remains of a lavish villa at Herculaneum, which along with Pompeii was one of several Roman towns destroyed when Mount Vesuvius erupted in A.D. 79.
Some of the texts from the Villa of the Papyri have been deciphered since they were discovered in the 1750s. But many more were badly damaged. A method called X-ray phase contrast tomography that previously has been used to examine fossils without damaging them allowed researchers to decipher several letters, proving that the method could be used to read what’s hidden inside the scrolls.
“Our goal was to show that the technique is sensitive to the writing,” said theoretical scientist Vito Mocella.
