Herculaneum papyri

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The Herculaneum papyri is more than 1,800 papyri found in Villa Herculaneum of Papyrus, in the 18th century, carbonized by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD.

Papyrus, containing a number of Greek philosophical texts, comes from the only remaining library of the whole ancient period. Most of the works found are related to the Epicurean philosopher and poet Philodemus of Gadara.

Video Herculaneum papyri

Discovery

Due to the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79AD, the bundle rolls were carbonized by intense heat from pyroclastic flows. This intense acidification occurs in a very short time, in a room that is oxygen deprived, resulting in the carbonization of the roll into fragile and very fragile blocks. They are then preserved by a layer of stone like cement.

In 1752, workers of the Bourbon royal family inadvertently discovered what is now known as the Papyrus Villa. There may still be a bottom of the Villa collection that remains buried.

Barker noted in 1908 his Buried Herculaneum :

Appearance rolls. - A large number of papyrus, after being buried eighteen centuries, have been found in villas named after them. In appearance, the scroll resembles a lump of charcoal; and many are thrown away. Some are brighter. Finally, the faint traces of the letters were seen in one of the blackened masses, found as scrolls of papyrus, crushed by decay and wet, full of holes, cut, crushed, and crushed. Papyrus is found at a depth of about 120 feet (37 meters).
Wood from some of the printing press containing them fell into the dust when exposed and many coils were found lying loose. The others are still on the shelf. Locality of the invention. - They are found in four different places on four different occasions. The first was discovered in autumn 1752, fourteen years after the first discovery of Herculaneum, in and near the tablinum, and only amounted to about 21 volumes and fragments, contained in two wood cases. In spring 1753, 11 papyrus was found in a room just south of the tablinum, and in the summer of the same year, 250 was found in a room to the north. In the spring and summer of the following year, 337 Greek papyrus and 18 Latin papyrus are found in the Library. Nothing important is found after this date.
The numbers given here do not include mere fragments. Including each small fragment found, the catalog provided 1756 manuscripts discovered until 1855, while the next invention brought a total of up to 1806. Of these, 341 were found almost entirely, 500 were merely scorched fragments, and the remainder of 965 were in every middle state. disintegration.
Care rolls. - No one knows how to deal with such strange material. Weber, the engineer, and Paderni, the guardian of the Museum in Portici, were not experts in paleography and philology, whose science, indeed, was almost in their infancy a hundred and fifty years ago. There are no official publications on papyrus until forty years after their discovery, and our information is an incomplete, inaccurate and conflicting need.
Pastor Piaggio's machine. - Through the inevitable ignorance of the moment, a large number of scrolls are destroyed rather than the difficulties of the case demanded. Many are thrown away only as charcoal; some are destroyed by extracting them from the lava where they are embedded. In an attempt to discover its contents, some are divided into two longitudinally. Finally, the clever Italian monk. Pastor Piaggio, created a very simple machine to unroll the manuscript by using silk threads attached to the edge of the papyrus. Of course this method destroys the beginnings of all papyrus, sometimes its end can not be found, and papyri is in a terrible decay condition.

Excavation

In the 18th century, the first excavations began. The excavations seemed closer to mining projects, when mineshafts were dug, and horizontal underground galleries were installed. The worker will place the object in the cart and send it back.

With the support of Charles III of Spain (1716 - 1788), Roque JoaquÃƒÆ'n de Alcubierre led the systematic excavation of Herculaneum with Karl Jakob Weber.

Barker noted in 1908 his Buried Herculaneum , "On the orders of the land of Francis I was purchased, and in 1828 the excavation began with two separate sections 150 feet, under the direction of architect Carlo Bonucci In 1868 still more land purchases were made, and excavations were carried in the east until 1875. The total area is now open of 300 to 150 perched (1510 x 756 meters).The northern and eastern excavation borders are respectively the modern roads of Vico di Mare and Vico Ferrara.there is only a small part of the ancient Herculaneum that can be seen on an open day. "

It is not clear how many papirs were originally found because many of the scrolls were destroyed by workers or when experts took them from volcanic tuffs.

The official list amounted to 1,814 rolls and fragments, of which 1,756 had been discovered in 1855. In the 90s it was reported that supplies now consisted of 1826 papyri, with more than 340 nearly finished, about 970 partially decomposed and partially solvable, and over 500 were fragments that was charred.

In 2016, academics ask in an open letter to the Italian authorities to consider new excavations, as it is assumed that many papyri can be buried on site.

Post-digging history

In 1802, King Ferdinand IV of Naples offered six scrolls to Napoleon Bonaparte in a diplomatic move. In 1803, along with other treasures, the scroll was transported by Francesco Carelli. After receiving the prize, Bonaparte then gave the scroll to the Institut de France under the leadership of Gaspard Monge and Vivant Denon.

In 1810, eighteen uncontrolled papyrus was given to George IV, four of which were submitted to the Bodleian Library; the rest is now mainly in the British Library.

Maps Herculaneum papyri

Unroll

Since their invention, previous efforts have used rose water, liquid mercury, vegetable gas, sulfur compounds, papyrus juice, or a mixture of ethanol, glycerin, and warm water, in the hope of making the rolls readable. According to Antonio de Simone and Richard Janko at first the papyrus was mistaken as a branch of carbonized trees, some of which may be thrown or burned to produce heat.

Initial attempt

In 1756, Abbot Piaggio became an ancient manuscript adviser at the Vatican Library using a machine he also found, to unlock the first scroll, which took four years (millimeters per day). The results are then quickly copied (as the writing quickly disappears: see below), reviewed by Helenist academics, and then corrected once again, if necessary, by the team that unrolled/copied.

In 1802, King Ferdinand IV of Naples appointed Pdt. John Hayter to help the process.

From 1802 to 1806, Hayter unrolled and partially described about 200 papyrus. These copies are kept in the Bodleian Library, where they are known as "Oxford Facsimiles of the Herculaneum Papyri".

In January 1816, Pierre-Claude Molard and Raoul Rochette led an effort to unroll a papyrus with a replica of Abbot Piaggio's machine. However, the entire scroll was destroyed without any information obtained.

From 1819 to 1820, Humphry Davy was commissioned by Prince Regent George IV to work on papyri Herculaneum. Although it is considered that he has only limited success, Davy's chemical method, using chlorine successfully partially removed 23 manuscripts.

In 1877, a papyrus was brought to a laboratory in the Louvre. The attempt to uncover it was made with a 'small factory', but it was unsuccessful and partially destroyed - leaving a quarter intact.

By the mid-20th century, only 585 rolls or fragments were completely exposed, and some were not wrapped up. Of unregulated papyrus, about 200 have been described and published, and about 150 are only described.

Modern effort

Most of the manuscripts preserved are stored in the National Archaeological Museum of Naples.

In 1969, Marcello Gigante founded the creation of the International Center for the Study of Herculaneum Papyri ( Centro Internazionale per lo Studio dei Papiri Ercolanesi ; CISPE). For the purpose of working towards the return of the excavation of the Papyrus Villa, and promoting the renewal of the study of the texts of Herculaneum, the institute initiated a new method of unrolling. Using the 'Oslo' method, the CISPE team separated the individual layers of papyrus. One of the scrolls exploded into 300 parts, and the other did the same thing but to a lesser extent.

Since 1999, papyrus has been digitized by applying multi-spectral imaging (MSI) techniques. International experts and prominent scholars participated in the project. On June 4, 2011 it was announced that the task of digitizing 1,600 papyri Herculaneum has been completed.

Since 2007, a team working with the Institut de Papyrologie and a group of scientists from Kentucky has used x-rays and nuclear magnetic resonance to analyze the artifacts.

In 2009, the Institute de France along with the French National Center for Scientific Research portrayed two whole Herculaneum papyri using X-ray micro-computed tomography (micro-CT) to reveal the inner structure of the roll. The team that heads the project estimates that if the roll is fully removed the length is between 36 and 49 feet. The internal structure of the roll is revealed to be very compact and convoluted, defeating the automatic unwrapping computer algorithm that has been developed by the team. Manual inspection of small segments of the internal structure of the roll proved more successful, opening individual fibers of papyrus. Unfortunately, no ink can be seen on a small sample being imaged, since carbon-based inks are not visible on carbon windings. However, some scrolls are written with tin-filled ink.

Virtual unroll

According to Bukreeva et al. 2016, "The virtual unrolling procedure can be divided into three main steps: volumetric scanning, segmentation, fabrication and layered texture recovery." Seales et al. 2005 and 2013, developed promising software that integrates smoothing functions and unrolling based on mass-spring surface simulations. Samko et al. 2014 proposed algorithm to solve the problem of touching points between layers of adjacent sheets.

In 2015, the team led by Dr. Vito Mocella, from the National Research Institute for Microelectronics and Microsystems (CNR-IMM), has announced that "... X-ray phase-contrast tomography (XPCT) can reveal hidden letters inside valuable papyrus without opening the scroll...] This pioneering research opens new prospects not only for many of the unopened papyrus, but also for others who have not been found, possibly including the second Latin Papyrus library at the lower Villa level, but not yet excavated. "The liberation of the letters microscopic - a tenth of a millimeter - on papyri seems enough to create a real phase contrast with XPCT scans. The team was even able to identify some writing on rolls that were still rolled up. With the goal of making this scan convincing, a team works with the National Science Foundation and Google to develop software that can sort through the displaced letters and find out where they are on the scroll.

Following the pioneering results of Dr. Mocella et al., In 2016 another team led by Dr. G. Ranocchia and Dr. A. Cedola announces encouraging results by using non-destructive Synchrotron X-ray contrast tomography (XPCT) techniques.

In September 2016, a method pioneered by University of Kentucky computer scientist W. Brent Seales was successfully used to open Dead Sea Scroll texts. According to experts, the new method designed by Dr. This Seales makes it possible to read the carbon scrolls from Herculaneum.

Difficulty

Unrolling will often damage or destroy the scroll completely. If the roll has been successfully opened, the original ink - which is exposed to the air - will begin to fade. In addition, this demolition form will often leave a sticky page removing or destroying additional information.

With X-ray micro-computed tomography (micro-CT), no ink can be seen because carbon-based inks are not visible on carbonized papyri.

From the Trenches - Archaeology Magazine

src: www.archaeology.org

Significance

Until the mid-18th century, the only known papyrus was some of the medieval survivors. Most likely, these scrolls will not survive the Mediterranean climate and will be destroyed or lost. Indeed, all of these scrolls are from the only surviving libraries of the antiquity that existed as a whole.

This papyrus contains many Greek philosophical texts. Most of the Books XIV, XV, XXV, and XXVIII of the Epicurus magnum opus, On Nature and the works of Epicurus's early followers are also represented among papyrus. From scrolls, 44 has been identified as the work of Philodemus of Gadara, an Epicurean philosopher and poet. The text "PHerc.Paris.2" contains a part of Philodemus' About Truth and Virtue .

The Chrysippus Stoic philosopher proved to have written over 700 works, all missing, with the exception of some fragments cited by other authors. Segments of his works In Providence and Logical Questions are found among papyrus; a third job of him may have recovered from a scorched scroll.

Part of the poem about the Battle of Actium also survives in the library.

Herculaneum Papyri in the National Library in Naples | The Phraser

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Additional images

Scrolls buried by Vesuvius are giving up their secrets thanks to a ...

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References

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Herculaneum papyri

Sabtu, 02 Juni 2018

Herculaneum papyri

Video Herculaneum papyri