2023-10-13
One of my favourite parts of my former role at the Bodleian Libraries was getting to work on exhibitions. Not just because it was varied and interesting work, but because it let me get up-close to remarkable artifacts that most people never even get the chance to see.
A personal favourite of mine are the Herculaneum Papyri. These charred scrolls were part of a private library near Pompeii that was buried by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 CE. Rediscovered from 1752, these ~1,800 scrolls were distributed to academic institutions around the world, with the majority residing in Naples' Biblioteca Nazionale Vittorio Emanuele III.
Under-construction exhibition including a highly-reflective suit worn by volcano field researchers.
As you might expect of ancient scrolls that got buried, baked, and then left to rot, they're pretty fragile. That didn't stop Victorian era researchers trying a variety of techniques to gently unroll them and read what was inside.
Blackened fragments of an unrolled papyrus.
Like many others, what I love about the Herculaneum Papyri is the air of mystery. Each could be anything from a lost religious text to, I don't know, somebody's to-do list ("buy milk, arrange for annual service of chariot, don't forget to renew volcano insurance..."). (For more-serious academic speculation about the potential value of the scrolls, Richard Carrier's got you covered.)
In recent years, we've tried "virtually unrolling" the scrolls using a variety of related technologies. And - slowly - we're getting there.
X-ray tomography is amazing, but it's hampered by the fact that the ink and paper have near-equivalent transparency to x-rays. Plus, all the other problems. But new techniques are helping to overcome them.
So imagine my delight when this week, for the first time ever, a complete word was extracted from one of the carbonised, still-rolled-up scrolls from Herculaneum. Something that would have seemed inconceivable to the historians who first discovered and catalogued the scrolls is now possible, thanks to their careful conservation over the years along with the steady advance of technology.
My blog post about leaving the Bodleian Libraries when I began working at Automattic
My blog post, "QR Codes of the Bodleian", in which I mention the Herculaneum Papyri
Herculaneum Papyri on Bodleian Treasures website, which I helped produce an earlier version of
Bodleian Libraries' exhibition on volcanoes
"Twelve Books at Herculaneum That Could Change History", by Richard Carrier
