Scientists May Read 2,000-Year-Old Scrolls Buried by Mount Vesuvius

Scientists recreated charred scrolls from Herculaneum and showed that lead in ancient ink allows distinguishing text from papyrus using X-ray scanning. The method is proposed for originals too fragile to unroll.

• Scrolls buried under 20–21 m of stone and ash in the 79 AD eruption of Vesuvius
• X-ray fluorescence detected lead at all tested concentrations
• Tomography with software allowed reading part of the text on copies
• Results published in PLOS One on September 16, 2026