…deciphered by new X-Ray technique? Read all about it:
Basically we have several scrolls that were found burned in the town of Herculaneum, a town close to Pompeii, which suffered the same fate during the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius back in 79 A.D.
Until now there was no way to “pull apart” the scrolls to try to read the material on them as doing so would destroy them. Now, however, thanks to a new X-Ray technique, there is a way to “see” the indentations of the writing on the scrolls without actually doing anything to them.
The exciting part of this? David Sider, a professor of classics at New York University put it succinctly within the article:
“For a scholar, it would be wonderful to have a manuscript of Virgil written in his lifetime, because what we have are medieval manuscripts which have suffered many changes at the hands of copyists.”
Fascinating stuff!