1,800 baked Herculaneum Scrolls now readable

well soon they will be, some are now.

We can now read scrolls that are 2 thousand years old.

When Mount Vesuvius destroyed Pompeii in 79CE it buried the Herculaneum library with its philosophical works, mostly from Philodemus of Gadara an Epicurean philosopher.

However without oxygen these scrolls did not burn they baked. It is now possible to read them and some have been read already see below.

This is a wonderful story of how Archeologist, Historians, Scientist, Engineers and Linguist have teamed up using Ai and baked scrolls to save a piece of Philosophy. The X-ray scans, multi-spectural imaging and shortwave infer-red hyperspectural imaging is able to find traces of carbon in the ink and slowly map out the writing without opening the scroll.

Already discovered are writings from Chrysippus. There are is more information on the aftermath of Alexander the Great. Two scrolls have already been unwrapped Completely!

What is truly amazing it that though this was destroyed by a natural disaster it is the only fully existing library from antiquity. The irony is that the Pompeii disaster serendipitously protected the library from biblioclasm done by humans which destroyed such irreplaceable troves of knowledge like the Burning of the Great Library in Alexandria or the destruction of City of Merv.

1,947 year later we now have 1,800 scrolls which can be virtually unraveled and copied and read. It is only a matter of time.

Decifered so far

…we will inquire into something, but we will not grasp it, if in some way we depart from ourselves and from our own nature…”

“Having…strained ourselves to the utmost through research and learning…possessing the same practical wisdom…”

“…such being the goods for us, even from the opposite evils there will be neither anything good — let alone beautiful — nor anything bad — let alone ugly — nor happiness…”

Now the project began by choosing a scroll that had already been damaged by a prior attempt using less technology in the 1980s. You can see in the graphic below the black parts are damaged from previous attempts.

Another fragment says “As too in the case of food, we do not right away believe things that are scarce to be absolutely more pleasant than those which are abundant.”

Another fragment says “For we do [not] refrain from questioning some things, but understanding/remembering others. And may it be evident to us to say true things, as they might have often appeared evident!”"

At $100 a square inch this could end up costing 100 million dollars to process the entire library.

Could we apply this technology to the Dead Sea Scrolls?!!!

Eye update

Gross ain’t it? about 5 to 12 days more and I will be able to see out of that eye again IF it works. This is about the time that I land in Los Vegas.

I am headed off to Vegas that trip was planned before the eye went awry. I am doing some networking and also the Jake Shields show with Jake and Dan Bilzerian. If you are in the area July 11 to 14 we can do an ANC meet up.

I can see sort of the medication actually messes up vision in both eyes temporarily. I need to be avoiding screens and I will. I wrote all of this about the scrolls before surgery.

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