X-Rays May Decipher Ancient Scrolls Buried by Mt. Vesuvius

Thanks to new X-ray technology, scientists may finally be able to decipher ancient scrolls that nearly 2,000 years ago were buried by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius, unlocking long-standing secrets.

In 79 AD, the ancient town of Herculaneum, along with Pompeii, was one of several Roman towns destroyed by the infamous Mt. Vesuvius eruption, which also killed thousands of people. Hundreds of papyrus scrolls, along with these sites, were covered in ash and lava. Since their discovery in the 1750s in what is called the Villa of the Papyri, the details of these scrolls have remained unknown.

Simply unrolling the scrolls could damage them beyond repair, and past attempts using X-rays have been unsuccessful because the smoke-based ink was virtually indistinguishable from the burned paper.

"They poured mercury on them, they soaked them in rosewater - all kinds of crazy stuff," Jennifer Sheridan Moss, president of the American Society of Papyrologists, told Live Science.

But now, a new technique by scientists at the Institute of Microelectronics and Microsystems (CNR) in Naples offers some hope.

Lead author Vito Mocella and his colleagues tried a method called X-ray phase contrast tomography, based on differences in the way radiation passes through different substances - in this case, the papyrus and ink.

"Our goal was to show that the technique is sensitive to the writing," Mocella told The Associated Press (AP). (Scroll to read on...)