When Mount Vesuvius erupted thousands of years ago, Pompeii was burned and buried in its fiery aftermath. Artifacts from the place, including those of neighboring cities, were also disfigured by the catastrophe.
However, the emergence of a new x-ray technology has enabled scientists to read the contents of ancient scrolls that were collected from a nearby city.
"The scrolls were recovered about 260 years ago from the ruins of the ancient Roman city Herculaneum, near Pompeii, preserved in a grand villa believed to be owned by the family of Julius Caesar's father-in-law," Time said.
A number of such scrolls have not yet been unrolled as doing so may destroy the very delicate artifacts. As such, researchers have not been able to study them or learn about their contents.
"But by using X-ray phase contrast tomography -- a 3-D technique used in medicine for soft biological tissue -- they have been able to reveal writing on the tightly wrapped scrolls without unrolling them," CNN reported.
In a paper written by the group headed by the Institute for Microelectronics and Microsystems of the National Council of Research's Vito Mocella, the Neapolitan team said that the new tech "opens up new opportunities to read many Herculaneum papyri, which are still rolled up, thus enhancing our knowledge of ancient Greek literature and philosophy."
"Roughly 1,800 of the delicate and brittle scrolls were unearthed in the 1750s. Some have been deciphered. Most have not. Methods used over the years to unroll them or separate their layers have destroyed many," Reuters said.
The team was able to use the new technique on one charred scroll and some scroll fragments. They found that the artifact they investigated "was in ancient Greek and the intact scroll may be a text written by 1st century BC philosopher Philodemus."
The said intact scroll had been given as a gift to Napoleon Bonaparte in 1802. The team has since managed to analyze six of such scrolls.
Based on the scrolls that researchers were able to decipher, historians have deduced that the Herculaneum library - described by CNN as the "only ancient library to survive with its books" - primarily consisted of writings on Epicurean philosophy, Mashable said.
"Most of what we know of Epicureanism is from these papyri," Mocella offered.
Although researchers and historians are optimistic about this new development, the text that may be found on the scrolls may not be likely to reveal "earth-shattering insights," judging by the information collected from the other scrolls.
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