Charred papyrus scrolls from a library inundated by volcanic ash in 79 C.E. are largely unreadable. UC Berkeley scientists teamed up to create and burn their own scrolls to test a new way to decipher them.
It certainly seems promising, and I am like a moth to a flame with anything involving recovering lost texts, but I feel like we’ve done some interesting reporting on the horse before checking to see if the cart has anything in it. :-)
No need to shit on dreams, yet, though. I really do hope this leads to a breakthrough, because I believe the previous scanning methods relied on actual physical differences (e.g. tiny stylus scratches) rather than the ink. This could be a huge shortcut.
The article says they sourced “traditional lampblack ink”. I would assume that it’s pretty similar to what they were using elsewhere at the time.
But you are right, the article also gave the impression that the vast majority of the scrolls would have been using carbon ink.
It certainly seems promising, and I am like a moth to a flame with anything involving recovering lost texts, but I feel like we’ve done some interesting reporting on the horse before checking to see if the cart has anything in it. :-)
No need to shit on dreams, yet, though. I really do hope this leads to a breakthrough, because I believe the previous scanning methods relied on actual physical differences (e.g. tiny stylus scratches) rather than the ink. This could be a huge shortcut.