In 1752, workmen of the Bourbon royal family accidentally discovered what is now known as the Villa of the Papyri. They were then preserved by the layers of cement-like rock. This intense parching took place over an extremely short period of time, in a room deprived of oxygen, resulting in the scrolls' carbonization into compact and highly fragile blocks. For example, as many as 44 works discovered were written by the 1st-century BC Epicurean philosopher and poet Philodemus, a resident of Herculaneum, who possibly formed the library, or whose library was incorporated in it.ĭue to the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD, bundles of scrolls were carbonized by the intense heat of the pyroclastic flows. The majority of classical texts referred to by other classical authors are lost, and there is hope that the continuing work on the library scrolls will discover some of these. The evolution of techniques to do this continues. However, reading the scrolls is extremely difficult, and can risk destroying them. The papyri, containing a number of Greek philosophical texts, come from the only surviving library from antiquity that exists in its entirety. The Herculaneum papyri are more than 1,800 papyrus scrolls found in the 18th century in the Herculaneum Villa of the Papyri, which were carbonized when the villa was engulfed by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD. Image contrast and brightness were enhanced to better visualize the details visible to the naked eye on their external surface. Photos of the papyrus fragments PHerc.1103 (a) and PHerc.110 (b,c).
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