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Posted on 07/02/2026 1:52:35 AM PDT by SunkenCiv
...To read it, we never unrolled it physically. Instead, we scanned it with high-resolution X-rays, reconstructed the wound sheet inside the volume, flattened it into a readable surface, and used machine learning to bring out the faint traces of ancient ink...
PHerc. 1667 is what survives of a larger roll: earlier attempts to open it by hand -- in the nineteenth century, and again in 1969 and the 1980s -- destroyed its outer layers and left only the compact inner core, about 8 cm of an original height of 19–24 cm. From that surviving portion we have now recovered and read the text in full -- the lower parts of some twenty-two columns, transcribed and reviewed by papyrologists. It is the first time the preserved text of a rolled Herculaneum scroll has been read continuously, end to end, rather than in isolated words or patches.
The recovered text is a philosophical treatise on ethics, and the evidence points to a Stoic work: it turns on human nature, impulse, and the moral progress of human beings, and its final preserved column names Aristocreon -- nephew and disciple of the great Stoic Chrysippus -- which, together with the language and themes of the text, places it in a Stoic context and dates it to the 2nd century BC.
Because the papyrus is damaged, the readings are fragmentary, with gaps where the surface is lost.
(Excerpt) Read more at scrollprize.org ...
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The carbonized scroll was read using a series of X-rays that were then stitched together using machine learning. [via IFLScience article]Image credit: Vesuvius Challenge
We commissioned a model of the Villa dei Papiri, made using LEGO® bricks, designed by Belle-Ve Bricks! You can find the build instructions here:Belle-Ve Bricks
Thanks for the link!
If only they hadn’t destroyed so many of these scrolls in the past trying to unroll them.
Gotta love the persistence though — “we found four words that time. Let’s bust up another one!”
2 interior courtyards and a peristyle! This family was quite rich.
CC
The Getty Museum in Pacific Palisades ( https://www.getty.edu/visit/villa/ ) is a sort of reproduction of the villa as it was understood at the time. However...
“Fresh attempts were made in the 1990s to explore the old excavations and these yielded an astonishing discovery. The villa was not merely built on one level, as had been previously thought, but was terraced down to the sea. It appeared that slaves had been trying to carry crates of books to safety when they were overwhelmed by the eruption.”
https://freerepublic.com/focus/chat/6a58990/posts
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