Bowerbird@aol.com wrote:
speaking of "missing pages", i got this today...
-bowerbird
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Fresh from London's "Independent"
Some possibly very exciting news:
Decoded at last: the 'classical holy grail' that may rewrite the history of the world
Scientists begin to unlock the secrets of papyrus scraps bearing long-lost words by the literary giants of Greece and Rome
I saw a feature on UK TV a year or more back about the half incinerated library found at Herculaneum. Those scrolls basically looked like charcoal briquettes, but could be make flexible by wetting with solvents, and prised carefully apart to put under a camera. They showed someone with a multispectral camera stepping through wavelengths till he arrived at one where 'charred papyrus' had a different reflectivity to 'charred papyrus+ink'. There was such an expression of delight on the researcher's face as he saw the text coming up on screen and described what he was reading.... So this technique has been around a while, long enough to be shown in use on television. I'm surprised it's taken so long to get attention from the press. Pretty cool technique, though, and worthy of a writeup.