Boy I hope they uncover some ancient books that have been lost to antiquity.
There are so many we know about but have no copies of.
There’s the Piso library from Herculaeum — the scrolls were found, carbonized but otherwise in good condition, still in their cubbies. Alas, the 19th c nimrods thought it would be best to try to *unroll* them (this was before X-rays, so no thought, “hey, let’s save these for future generations”). And continuous failures didn’t seem to send the message, stupid, quit trying to unroll them.
Anyway, turns out Piso really, really liked the Epicurean philosophers, actually, mostly just the one guy. It also turns out that the villa had two more storeys, and so there’s a hope (maybe a delusion, really) that there are two additional libraries. I doubt it, for a reason easy to spot in the wiki-wacky-pedia excerpt below.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Villa_of_the_Papyri
At the time of the eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79, the valuable library was packed in cases ready to be moved to safety when it was overtaken by pyroclastic flow; the eruption eventually deposited some 20-25 m of volcanic ash over the site, charring the scrolls but preserving them... new excavations in the 1990s revealed two previously undiscovered floors to the villa, which was built in a series of terraces overlooking the sea... Using multi-spectral imaging, a technique developed in the early 1990s, it is possible to read the burned papyri. With multi-spectral imaging, many pictures of the illegible papyri are taken using different filters in the infrared or in the ultraviolet range, finely tuned to capture certain wavelengths of light. Thus, the optimum spectral portion can be found for distinguishing ink from paper on the blackened papyrus surface. Non-destructive CT scans will, it is hoped, provide breakthroughs in reading the fragile unopened scrolls without destroying them in the process.
http://ac-support.europe.umuc.edu/~jmatthew/naples/papyri.htm
forgot to:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1630820/posts?page=12#12
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1871533/posts?page=7#7
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1489615/posts?page=14#14
http://www.google.com/search?q=villa+of+the+papyri+site:freerepublic.com