The charred Herculaneum papyrus was deciphered during the eruption of Vesuvius
Mage courtesy of Re-Digital
a novel – Thanks to an international competition, young researchers were able to read a 2,000-year-old text.
It's a text about music, fun, and growing up! This papyrus roll was literally cooked 2,000 years ago at a temperature of over 320°C, when torrents of clay and volcanic material descended from Vesuvius to cover the cities of Herculaneum and Pompeii (79 AD). The pages were soldered together and their contents are believed to be lost forever. But the international competition made it possible to achieve the tremendous feat of deciphering and reading hundreds of words spread across more than 15 columns.
The papyrus manuscript was discovered between 1752 and 1754, along with several hundred other manuscripts, in a luxurious Roman villa in Herculaneum belonging to Calpurnius Besson Casoninus, father-in-law of Julius Caesar. It has since been called the “Villa of Papyrus,” and the papyrus manuscript has been preserved ever since. In the libraries of the French Institute in Paris. It was presented with five other manuscripts by Napoleon Bonaparte, who received it in 1802 as a gift from the King of Naples. The manuscript…
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