Abstract
A collection of more than 1800 carbonized papyri, discovered in the Roman ‘Villa dei Papiri’ at Herculaneum is the unique classical library survived from antiquity. These papyri were charred during 79 A.D. Vesuvius eruption, a circumstance which providentially preserved them until now. This magnificent collection contains an impressive amount of treatises by Greek philosophers and, especially, Philodemus of Gadara, an Epicurean thinker of 1st century BC. We read many portions of text hidden inside carbonized Herculaneum papyri using enhanced X-ray phase-contrast tomography non-destructive technique and a new set of numerical algorithms for ‘virtual-unrolling’. Our success lies in revealing the largest portion of Greek text ever detected so far inside unopened scrolls, with unprecedented spatial resolution and contrast, all without damaging these precious historical manuscripts. Parts of text have been decoded and the ‘voice’ of the Epicurean philosopher Philodemus is brought back again after 2000 years from Herculaneum papyri.
Highlights
Our success lies in combining XPCT with tailoring the basic principles of the ‘virtual-unrolling’ to the Herculaneum papyri and, virtually open, read and decode the largest portion of text, hidden inside unopened papyri, ever detected so far
This success is based on three main facts: i) the experience gained with the experiment on the phantom; ii) the optimal experimental conditions which provided, to the best of our knowledge, 3D images of the inner structure in carbonized Herculaneum papyri of the best quality ever obtained; iii) the very intricate internal arrangement of chaotic bundles of layers still presented sets of bent, splayed and twisted layers
Once the XPCT provided the 3D volume of the bookrolls, ‘virtual-unrolling’ was performed
Summary
A) multi-energy scans were performed on the phantom sample in order to distinguish between absorption and phase contributions: incident X-ray beam was monochromatized at three different energies: 80, 52 and 30 keV. 1400 radiograms were recorded for each scan, covering a total angle range of 180°, with acquisition time of 0.05 seconds per point Results of these experiments allow to read and decipher letters and numbers previously written inside papyrus roll and to optimize the experimental conditions. The surface flattening and unrolling can be interpreted as an isometric mapping (i.e. it preserve distances, which minimises text distortion in the parchment) from 3D to 2D images To solve these problems different approaches were proposed.
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