GoKawiil
Tech News
Scientists made replica papyrus scrolls and deliberately charred them to mimic the carbonized scrolls found at sites like Herculaneum. The goal was to study how burning affects papyrus structure, informing techniques used to decode ancient scrolls without physically unrolling them.
A research team created their own burned, rolled-up papyrus scrolls and found they could read the hidden text by using X-ray computed tomography and X-ray fluorescence to detect lead in the ink, rather than relying on carbon detection alone. The method allowed them to virtually unroll the scrolls and clearly view writing that previous X-ray CT techniques could not distinguish from the carbon-based papyrus itself. The findings are published in PLoS ONE.