
X-ray technique 'reads' burnt Vesuvius scroll - kevcampb
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-30888767
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laichzeit0
There are so many great Classical works that are lost to us [1]. I would
really love if they turn out to be some of them, even if just fragments
thereof. Polybius' Histories (particularly after the battle of Cannae), Livy's
Ab Urbe Condita, Menander's plays, maybe Suetonius' Lives of Famous Whores for
interest sake ;)

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_work#Classical_world](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_work#Classical_world)

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VLM
This aspect strikes me as a perfect crowd sourcing "science at home" project
or a craptcha task:

"The work was time-consuming and involved a lot of guesswork, particularly
because the layers of paper were not just rolled, but squashed and mangled by
their encounter with Vesuvius"

I'd participate, in my infinite spare time. My Latin isn't so good, but this
would probably help with that, also.

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cydonian_monk
I was reading up on this earlier today and it looks like an absolutely
fascinating project.

Rather labor intensive to rebuild the document though, and not something that
seems easily automated. So many of the scrolls appear to have kinks or major
warpage in them, and I can only imagine many of the layers have fused
together. I guess if you could find a common thread that goes across the
entire length of a layer (be that an actual physical papyrus "thread" or some
marker like an inked line) you could use that as a calibration point. From
there it would be easier to map out and extract the letters on each layer
(though still not easy). Does anyone who's read the main article in Nature (1)
have any more details?

1:
[http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2015/150120/ncomms6895/full/nco...](http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2015/150120/ncomms6895/full/ncomms6895.html)

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greglindahl
Interesting juxtaposition with the prior article about destroying Egyptian
funeral masks in order to read them. In this case preserving the scrolls will
eventually allow a much better result.

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raverbashing
I though this would be a simple "put the thing under the X-ray and read it"
and not like reading a burned "toilet paper roll"

Amazing

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mjklin
Years ago I heard they were using this technique on the burned papyrus library
from Oxyrynchus. Wonder how they're coming with that.

