The Ancient Library of Herculaneum
Posted: Sun Mar 13, 2005 6:13 pm
Salvete Omnes,
I got another interesting article which I would like to share with you. It was published on Feb. 4th in the "Hamburger Abendblatt" based on an article by Siegfried Helm, Oxford:
The Scholarship of Antiquity - Under the Lava?
Many works of the great philosophers Aristoteles and Sophokles were never discovered. Sientists suppose they are at the library of Herculaneum which was destroyed by the eruption of the year 79. Now they plan there the most remarkable excavation of the 21st century.
It was not only Pompeii and its neighboring towns which got destroyed during the eruption which caused also the death of thousands. The debris and ashes of the volcano also covered in Herculaneum one of the largest libraries in antiquity. Now British scientists hope to discover there the literary treasures which are lost for two thousand years.
Under the 30 m thick layer of lava could be numerous papyri scrolls which one could read with the new spectral analysis.At first excavations of the library discovered in 1738 they found already 1800 papyri. The library has besides the upper floor three lower levels which the scientists of Oxford University hope to excavate. Time is running out because volcanologists assume that the Vesuvius might erupt in near future.
A team of archaelogists has formed in Oxford the "Herculaneum Society" and the excavation project is called "Villa Papyri". They already know the dimensions of the library with a length of 250 m. At the first excavation in 1738 they also had found mosaic floors. One of the charbonized scrolls was given to Napoleon as a gift.
The 1800 other charbonized scrolls have been in the meantime made legible with the help of Multi Spectral Imaging. 30,000 pages were saved on CD-ROM, under which they found nearly the half of the works of the Greek philosopher Epikur which were lost for 2300 years.They also found an essay of Zenon of Sidon, to which Cicero was listening in Athens. Professor Richard Janko of Michigan University pointed out that this text was one of the first works of this philosophers whose works all got lost during late antiquity.
90 percent of the writings of antiquity got lost during the middle ages because usually an organic material like papyri scrolls does not survive two thousand years. Only under special circumstances when it is charbonized and sealed off from air the letters on papyri stay legible.
The library of Herculaneum could be compared to the one of Alexandria which was founded in the third century BCE and contained 700,000 book scrolls and got destroyed in the fourth or seventh century which was counted as the biggest catastrophy for history of ideas.
If the upper level already bears treasures like the works of Epikur the archaeologists dream to find much more in the three lower levels. Experts note that of the 123 pieces of Sophokles only seven are known. Euripides should have written 90 pieces, only 75 were read in Alexandria, but we know only 17 tragedies and one satyr play. Aischylos wrote between 70 to 90 pieces, only seven are known. Such a large library could have contained also standard works such as the history of Rome by Livius. Over 100 of these 142 books of this monumental work of history are lost. Of greatest importance would be also the works of Aristoteles.
A team of professors with scholars from Harvard, Oxford and London states that they expect to find well done copies of wellknown master pieces and other works which were losst for two thousand years. This would be a cultural treasure of immense dimension.
But there is a controversy of how fast one should dig up the treasures. One side would like to do this as fast as possible becaues of the danger of earthquakes and another volcano eruption, the other side fears that opening of the sealed off area might destroy the scrolls as well as the mosaics and frescoes forever.
How the antique writings were made legible
The technology of decoding the charbonized papyri was used first by the NASA to analyze the light of stars and planets. Their lights will be put by multi spectral imaging into a spectrum with which one can identify the elements and compounds. With this they also make the writing on the papyri legible. This technology was used for the first time at the museum of Naples by Steve Boras of Brigham Young University in Utah. He could read though only a few of the letters written with ink because the contrast between ink and papyrus was not big enough. Boras used a digital camera with high sensitivity for a broader light spectrum which could get deep into the infrared wave lengths. When he finally used a filter which allowed only infrared light between 900 and 950 nanometers to go through the long lost texts appeared clearly. The ink obviously absorbed the infrared light in a different way than the surrounding papyrus.
I got another interesting article which I would like to share with you. It was published on Feb. 4th in the "Hamburger Abendblatt" based on an article by Siegfried Helm, Oxford:
The Scholarship of Antiquity - Under the Lava?
Many works of the great philosophers Aristoteles and Sophokles were never discovered. Sientists suppose they are at the library of Herculaneum which was destroyed by the eruption of the year 79. Now they plan there the most remarkable excavation of the 21st century.
It was not only Pompeii and its neighboring towns which got destroyed during the eruption which caused also the death of thousands. The debris and ashes of the volcano also covered in Herculaneum one of the largest libraries in antiquity. Now British scientists hope to discover there the literary treasures which are lost for two thousand years.
Under the 30 m thick layer of lava could be numerous papyri scrolls which one could read with the new spectral analysis.At first excavations of the library discovered in 1738 they found already 1800 papyri. The library has besides the upper floor three lower levels which the scientists of Oxford University hope to excavate. Time is running out because volcanologists assume that the Vesuvius might erupt in near future.
A team of archaelogists has formed in Oxford the "Herculaneum Society" and the excavation project is called "Villa Papyri". They already know the dimensions of the library with a length of 250 m. At the first excavation in 1738 they also had found mosaic floors. One of the charbonized scrolls was given to Napoleon as a gift.
The 1800 other charbonized scrolls have been in the meantime made legible with the help of Multi Spectral Imaging. 30,000 pages were saved on CD-ROM, under which they found nearly the half of the works of the Greek philosopher Epikur which were lost for 2300 years.They also found an essay of Zenon of Sidon, to which Cicero was listening in Athens. Professor Richard Janko of Michigan University pointed out that this text was one of the first works of this philosophers whose works all got lost during late antiquity.
90 percent of the writings of antiquity got lost during the middle ages because usually an organic material like papyri scrolls does not survive two thousand years. Only under special circumstances when it is charbonized and sealed off from air the letters on papyri stay legible.
The library of Herculaneum could be compared to the one of Alexandria which was founded in the third century BCE and contained 700,000 book scrolls and got destroyed in the fourth or seventh century which was counted as the biggest catastrophy for history of ideas.
If the upper level already bears treasures like the works of Epikur the archaeologists dream to find much more in the three lower levels. Experts note that of the 123 pieces of Sophokles only seven are known. Euripides should have written 90 pieces, only 75 were read in Alexandria, but we know only 17 tragedies and one satyr play. Aischylos wrote between 70 to 90 pieces, only seven are known. Such a large library could have contained also standard works such as the history of Rome by Livius. Over 100 of these 142 books of this monumental work of history are lost. Of greatest importance would be also the works of Aristoteles.
A team of professors with scholars from Harvard, Oxford and London states that they expect to find well done copies of wellknown master pieces and other works which were losst for two thousand years. This would be a cultural treasure of immense dimension.
But there is a controversy of how fast one should dig up the treasures. One side would like to do this as fast as possible becaues of the danger of earthquakes and another volcano eruption, the other side fears that opening of the sealed off area might destroy the scrolls as well as the mosaics and frescoes forever.
How the antique writings were made legible
The technology of decoding the charbonized papyri was used first by the NASA to analyze the light of stars and planets. Their lights will be put by multi spectral imaging into a spectrum with which one can identify the elements and compounds. With this they also make the writing on the papyri legible. This technology was used for the first time at the museum of Naples by Steve Boras of Brigham Young University in Utah. He could read though only a few of the letters written with ink because the contrast between ink and papyrus was not big enough. Boras used a digital camera with high sensitivity for a broader light spectrum which could get deep into the infrared wave lengths. When he finally used a filter which allowed only infrared light between 900 and 950 nanometers to go through the long lost texts appeared clearly. The ink obviously absorbed the infrared light in a different way than the surrounding papyrus.