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Nearly 2,000 years after it was buried in Mount Vesuvius ash, a charred Roman scroll has revealed its author and title without even being unrolled. Title revealed on PHerc. 172 using ink detection model. - Vesuvius Challenge The scroll, named PHerc. 172, is one of hundreds unearthed in the ancient Roman town of Herculaneum, which was entombed in volcanic debris when Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 AD, one of history’s most infamous eruptions The scroll was scanned in July at Diamond Light Source, the UK’s national synchrotron facility in Oxfordshire. Unusually, traces of ink appeared in the X-ray images, enabling...

Reseachers uncover a pyramid-like structure in the Judean Desert, photo taken March 2025 (photo credit: JUDEAN DESERT SURVEY UNIT, ISRAEL ANTIQUITIES AUTHORITY) =============================================================================== Experts uncover a massive pyramid-shaped structure, ancient papyrus documents and rare artifacts from Hellenistic-era rule in southern Israel, shedding new light on the region’s history. An excavation in the Judean Desert unearthed a massive 2,200-year-old pyramid-shaped structure alongside ancient papyri, weapons, tools, and fabrics, which experts are calling one of the richest archaeological excavations in the area. The Israel Antiquities Authority and the Heritage Ministry, which are jointly leading the dig north of Nahal Zohar, say...

La Brújula Verde reports that the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities completed a two-year excavation and preservation project of an ancient mining camp at Jabal Sukari near the Red Sea. Archaeologists were under pressure to complete the project as the site is currently endangered by modern mining activities. The Egyptian team uncovered a vast gold processing complex that dates back 3,000 years, as well as a settlement inhabited by those who worked at the mine. The mining facility included specialized factories for extracting the gold from quartz veins, which has provided new information about ancient methods of obtaining and...

A rediscovered Greek papyrus details a Roman court case in Iudaea involving tax fraud, forgery, and possible rebellion on the eve of the Bar Kokhba revolt. It provides new insights into Roman legal practices, political tensions, and financial crimes in the Near East.Scholars from the Austrian Academy of Sciences, the University of Vienna, and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem have unveiled a rare papyrus from the Israel Antiquities Authority's collection, providing valuable insights into Roman legal proceedings and daily life in the Roman Near East.Published in the international scholarly journal Tyche, their research examines how the Roman imperial state addressed...

Artnet News reports that the Euripides Papyrus, which was discovered in Egypt in 2022, has been translated by Yvona Trnka-Amrhein and John Gilbert of the University of Colorado Boulder. The papyrus was found in a clump in a corner of a pit grave at the necropolis of Philadelphia by archaeologist Basem Gehad of Egypt's Ministry of State for Antiquities, and has been dated to the third century A.D. based upon its writing style and archaeological context. The translation has revealed some 100 previously unknown lines written by the Greek playwright Euripides in the fifth century B.C. The lines come from...

A small, 1,600-year-old papyrus fragment discovered in a German archive has been revealed to contain the earliest known copy of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, an early Christian text describing the childhood of Jesus that once enjoyed enormous popularity but was not canonized into the New Testament.

A newly deciphered manuscript dating back more than 1,600 years has been identified as the earliest known account of Jesus Christ’s childhood. The manuscript, written on papyrus in either the 4th or 5th century, had been stored at a library in Hamburg, Germany, for decades and was long believed to be an insignificant document. However, two experts have now decoded the text and say it is the earliest surviving copy of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas. “The papyrus fragment is of extraordinary interest for research,” Lajos Berkes, a theology lecturer and one of the two men who deciphered the document,...

Experts in Germany have uncovered a deciphered manuscript that has been determined to be the oldest record of Jesus Christ’s childhood. As CBS News reported, the 1,600-year-old document had been stored in a university library in Hamburg, Germany, for decades. It was ignored until Dr. Lajos Berkes, from Germany’s Institute for Christianity and Antiquity at Humboldt University in Berlin, and professor Gabriel Nocchi Macedo from Belgium’s University of Liège looked it over and revealed it as the earliest surviving copy of the “Infancy Gospel of Thomas,” a document detailing Jesus Christ’s childhood. The two experts said in a news release...

Analysis of Herculaneum papyrus scroll fragments reveals the use of metallic ink in Greco-Roman literary inscription centuries earlier than previously thought, according to a study*. Scholars of ancient scrolls hold that texts from antiquity, particularly Greek and Latin literary manuscripts produced until the fourth century AD, were largely written in carbon-based ink on papyri, the fibrous structure of which allowed scribes to jettison ruling lines. Vito Mocella and colleagues used nondestructive synchrotron X-ray-based methods to chemically analyze the barely visible black inscriptions on two nearly flat, multilayered papyrus fragments that were found at the Villa dei Papiri at Herculaneum in...

Archaeologists working in Egypt's Saqqara region have unearthed a 16-meter-long ancient papyrus for the first time in a century...Scientists initially believed the ancient scroll measured only nine meters, but after it had been fully restored and translated, it became clear that it actually measured 16 meters!...Waziri added that the papyrus was restored in the restoration laboratory of the Egyptian Museum in Tahrir, and has been dubbed the "Waziri Papyrus".This papyrus is the first one ever to be discovered by an Egyptian and is named after an Egyptian...The discovery of a 16-meter-long papyrus containing Book of the Dead spells could shed...

Denver Newsroom, Mar 19, 2021 / 03:01 am MT (CNA).- Israeli archaeologists announced this week the discovery of several new sets of Dead Sea Scrolls— ancient fragments of biblical text that have, for the past 70 years, contributed to scholars’ knowledge about the Old Testament. The new scroll fragments, which the Israeli Antiquities Authority announced March 16, include the books of Zechariah and Nahum, both minor prophets. Dr. John Bergsma, professor of theology at Franciscan University of Steubenville who has written and spoken extensively on the Dead Sea Scrolls, told CNA that an interesting feature of the scrolls recently found...

A sex spell designed to force a man into bed with his female admirer has been discovered on an ancient Egyptian papyrus. The newly-translated spell demands that a man called Kephalas face 'anxiety at midday, evening, and at all times' until he has sex with a woman called Taromeway. It also features a crude drawing of the naked Kephalas, his genitals grossly exaggerated, as he's shot with an arrow by the ancient Egyptian god of the dead, Anubis. The 'erotic-binding spell', apparently commissioned by Taromeway herself, was likely placed in a tomb where it was meant to summon the ghost...

Victor Hugo on Gutenberg's Press, "The Invention of Printing ... is the Mother of Revolution." HISTORY OF WRITING The invention of "writing" was around 3300 BC. Richard Overy, editor of The Times Complete History of the World, stated in "The 50 Key Dates of World History" (October 19, 2007): "No date appears before the start of human civilizations about 5,500 years ago and the beginning of a written or pictorial history." Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson stated in the Cosmos TV series (2014, natgeotv.com, episode 10, "The Immortals"): "It was the people who once lived here, around 5,000 years ago, who...

The University of Copenhagen in Denmark is home to a unique collection of Ancient Egyptian papyrus manuscripts. A large part of the collection has not yet been translated, leaving researchers in the dark about what they might contain. "A large part of the texts are still unpublished. Texts about medicine, botany, astronomy, astrology, and other sciences practiced in Ancient Egypt," says Egyptologist Kim Ryholt, Head of the Carlsberg Papyrus Collection at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark... "It's totally unique for me to be able to work with unpublished material. It doesn't happen in many places around the world," says PhD...

A certain Valerius and a certain Athanasius lived during the 5th century AD in Egypt. 1500 years ago, the certain Valerius wrote a letter to Athanasius in Ancient Greek. The letter contained insults and threats of lashing and burning. A fragment of the letter,  written on a Papyrus was translated by scientists. "You trickster, you traitor, you son of a b**** ..." Valerius writes to Athanasius. However, the reason why Valerius was fuming so much remains unknown as the rest of the papyrus is missing. An x-rated papyrus? 'Valerius to Athanasius: You trickster, you traitor, you son of a b****...

We can forget all the ideas crediting Atlanteans or space aliens with building the Great Pyramid of Giza, and instead imagine ourselves travelling back in time in H G Wells's time machine to try and work out not how the ancient Egyptians built this enormous edifice, because this lies beyond our present understanding, but rather what we can best judge to be its most appropriate proportions. Then, however, there were no electronic calculators, only ropes and rods. Constructing right angles at the four corners of a pyramid is easy. To do it, history tells us that the Egyptians were aware...

A team of scientists at the University of Basel, Switzerland, has discovered that a 1,800-year-old papyrus from the Basel Papyrus Collection is an ancient medical text from late antiquity and that it was likely written by the famous Roman physician Galen. The University Library in Basel possesses a collection of 65 papyri, mostly in Greek and several in Coptic, Hieratic and Latin. Less than half of this collection was published by Ernst Rabel in 1917 in Papyrusurkunden der Öffentlichen Bibliothek der Universität zu Basel. With mirror writing on both sides, one of the Basel papyri — dubbed P.Basel 1A —...

Six years ago, Dan Wallace announced in a debate with Bart Ehrman that a paleographer had dated a recently-found papyrus fragment of Mark to the first century. Since then, I’ve received many requests for updates, and I finally have one to give. The fragment has now been published, and there’s good news and bad news. The bad news is that its official date is late second or early third century. Dan Wallace has written a post explaining what happened and offering an apology. Here’s a brief excerpt: In my debate with Bart, I mentioned that I had it on...

Researchers have known for many years that workers in ancient Egypt recycled papyrus for different purposes -- one particular use was creating decorated boxes into which mummies were placed. Papyrus scraps were glued together using paste and plaster, similar to modern paper-mâché projects... The technique involved using a digital imaging method that interpreted light bounced back from a subject. Prior research had shown that the pigment in ink used by the ancient Egyptians over 2000 years ago could fluoresce under the proper infrared filter. By using such filters with digital imaging technology, the team was able to see the ink...

LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - Dating back to the days of the Pharaoh Khufu, or Cheops in the Fourth Dynasty, the harbor dates back 4,500 years. The Great Pyramid of Giza serves as the tomb of Khufu, who died around 2566 B.C. The harbor was built on the Red Sea shore in the Wadi al-Jarf area, 112 miles south of Suez. The harbor was discovered by a French-Egyptian mission from the French Institute for Archaeological Studies. The site "predates by more than 1,000 years any other port structure known in the world," according to the mission's director, Pierre...