Deciphering the ancient scrolls of Herculaneum | 60 Minutes Archive

60 Minute Rewind You've heard of Pompeii, the

ancient

Roman city destroyed when Mount Vvus erupted in 79 AD. Less known is the neighboring city of Herculaneum, also buried by the volcano when the city was rediscovered in the 18th century. The excavators found what could be the richest deposit. of

ancient

Western wisdom a library full of papyrus

scrolls

Scholars think there could be unknown Greek and Latin masterpieces possibly early Christian writings even the first references to Jesus the problem is that the volcanic heat left the

scrolls

so charred and brittle that no one has been able to open them without breaking them into pieces we heard that three scholars might have finally found a way to unravel the mystery of the scrolls so we traveled to italy to see what we could discover about the

herculaneum

scrolls the italian city of

herculaneum

is located along From the Bay of Naples on the western slope of Mount Vvus, the city bustles with the chaos of Italian traffic and the easy flow of Italian life.

It is not a rich place, but beneath these narrow streets lies buried a treasure, the ancient Roman coastal city of Herculaneum, in tune with Pompeii in 79. The modern city is built on the ancient city. There is no archaeological site in the world that matches this. We went to Herculaneum with Andrew Wallace Hadel, founding director of the Herculaneum Conservation Project. He showed us the dig site in all its ghostly grandeur. What do you think is happening here? If they were trying to escape or were hiding in my sight, they are not trying to escape by sea, they are simply trying to take shelter under these folds, they devastated the city with successive massive waves of heat and ash for 24 hours those waves kill all life human and all other forms of life and then wave after wave they start to accumulate these layers of ash that compact into rocks until we have this, yeah, 80 feet of 80 80 feet of solid rock that ended up preserving this place so well, yeah , the paradox is that catastrophic destruction is also exceptionally good preservation, preserving Herculaneum as a fossil in amber, all frozen in forgotten time for nearly 17 centuries until legend has it that a farmer dug a well.

In the past they built a really big public building here. Hrel told us that Herculaneum was like the Malibu of the Roman Empire. Oasis for the elite. The first excavators discovered this once opulent Villa. Today it looks like a cave in 79 AD, it looked like this: the Getty. Villa in Malibu, California, is a recreation of the summer retreat believed to belong to Julius Caesar's family, digging tunnels in the ancient Villa in Italy. The first treasure hunters unearthed enough statues and riches to fill a large room in the Naples museum, but the largest. The treasures don't seem valuable at all These are the Herculaneum papyrus scrolls 1,800 ancient books written on sheets of plant fiber singed by volcanic heat Found in the only intact library left of the ancient world So where was the library?

The precarious Villa excavation site is off-limits to the public, but Massimo Osana, former administrator of Herculaneum and Pompeii, took us inside the Library itself, it has not been excavated this way, no, no, he said it could There are hundreds more Scrolls yet to return to Earth. here in the library it is a possibility perhaps Aristotle, who knows Aristotle, yes, Ides, yes, Virgil, for example. Scholars have been desperately trying to open the Scrolls since they were discovered. The history of the development of the Herculaneum Scrolls is full of failures. Everyone who tried to do it. When he opened the Scrolls he had left a frightening trail of fragmentary results.

Brent seals a daring computer scientist from the new world. The University of Kentucky, to be precise, had what he thought was a brilliant idea to solve the 2,000-year-old mystery. Use modern medicine. The imaging technology people would go to the doctor every day and do a CT scan or an MRI and see inside his body completely non-invasively. If you can do that to a human in the doctor's office, why couldn't we see inside? a scroll that was the thought I didn't think was such a far-fetched no in the Arcane world where scholars spend their entire careers analyzing fragments of ancient texts Brent Seals is a superstar who made a name for himself by digitally restoring damaged medieval manuscripts with software he had designed a colleague told him about the Herculaneum Scrolls that are mostly in the library of Naples, some others in France and England England considered them the ultimate challenge the people are gone the cultures are gone the places are gone and yet, like a time capsule you have this object that tells a story, everything enclosed in this thing that looks like a small piece of coal, everyone is enclosed.

He knew that imaging technology could only reveal a jumble of letters like this to read the Scrolls he would have. to unroll them much like this medieval French scroll at the Morgan Library in Manhattan, but he would have to do it virtually. After years of trial and error, he and his students thought they would crack the code with algorithms and software that he was arrogant enough enough to announce in Oxford before an international conference of scholars studying ancient papyri that he could do what no one else had done. I launched myself towards the fence. I gave him a talk in which I said, "I think we can read everything inside the Herculaneum scrolls without opening them." Did you think the pists would come running up to you with their Scrolls and say here, check these out?

I smile now because that's exactly what I thought didn't happen. No, so how hard is it to get these Scrolls? I would say it is almost impossible because they are very rare and very fragile. The curators are reluctant to let anyone handle them, including a superstar like Brent Seals, who they wouldn't give in to even after he published a paper theorizing a better way to look inside the scrolls with this a synchrotron, a super-powerful X-ray. generated by electrons racing around this ring at almost the speed of light. There are only about 50 in the world. This one is in Great Britain.

The X-ray is this green ray. 100 billion. times stronger than any hospital Machella, a physicist from Naples says that he first learned about the Scrolls when he was a child. I don't remember exactly the age, but 9 10 and Gratian Renia is a papist who studies the ancient Roman papyri and pours over pieces of Herculaneum. The Naples Library Rolls are mostly fragments of Greek philosophy. I come here and work. in this papyrus every day they call it academic competition they call it ego but the American Brent seals Renia the papist and the Italian physicist Mella became fierce competitors as they fought to make history as the first to reveal the contents of the Scrolls a combat of Gladiator fight in the sacred Halls of the Ivory Tower Renia accuses Machella of sabotaging his research seals because he was convinced that the Italians stole his idea for using the synchrotron.

The mystery of the scrolls is unfolding like a tragic Italian opera. The story will continue after this. You know, they say Bill, that um, the. The reason academics argue is because there is very little at stake, right, there is actually a lot at stake if you think about the possibility of revealing to the world these 2,000-year-old manuscripts that no one has ever read and okay, now let's go. to discuss with them. I really mean that perhaps we could do it later after we had read them, but the two Italian rivals used their European connections and convinced the curators to allow each of them, and only them, limited access to a few scrolls to scan with the synchrotron. he jumped on the American Brent stamps and ran towards it in gryl France machella got there first it was difficult for us to make him out but he said his scan revealed letters these are letters look yes he said these are letters machella won praise and international headlines as the first person who saw the inside of one of the ancient Scrolls of Herculaneum when the papist rhenian scanned his Scrolls said he made machella, better if someone else found something as clear as this nothing like this said he saw phrases they would be persuaded this is me I would be persuaded, yeah sure, Brent Seals isn't convinced, you don't believe that, hey, I get my hopes up all the time, but at the end of the day I'm a scientist and wishful thinking isn't what science is based on.

I have not been able to replicate his results and so far I have not heard from anyone who has been able to replicate them, but with his findings published in scientific journals, Italian academics savored his achievements. Machella views Brent Seal's criticism as bitter. Brent Seals examined his latest findings. and he says that he doesn't see any letters. I know, I don't know why you don't know why I don't know why I guess my threshold is a little different when I see writing, you know it should line up, it should be. more than a letter or two, you should be able to see text that looks like something you can actually read, since he was unable to gain access to the Herculaneum Scrolls seals.

He looked elsewhere to test his algorithms and software which led him to Jerusalem and this charred. Fragment of a 1,700-year-old scroll from a burned synagogue near the Dead Sea Is there a line here? Israeli archaeologists weren't expecting much, but what the seal software revealed was like a miracle. What was it? What was the Bible? He resurrected all the surviving Hebrews. script the oldest text of the Bible as we know it today the first two chapters of Leviticus on a scroll that was previously assumed to have nothing on it or was so damaged that no one would notice that this is what one would expect to see in the Herculaneum Parchments absolutely, I mean it is actually an identifiable text written below the line after his breakthrough in Jerusalem, even Graziano Rocchia admits that Brent Seal's software is brilliant now that the Library of Naples, which did not allow the seals had the Scrolls in their hands, is considering granting them access.

He is convinced that the secrets of Herculaneum locked in the Scrolls for 2000 years are within his reach.