Mount Vesuvius

In a landmark achievement for archaeology and the study of ancient philosophy, researchers have digitally “unrolled” and are reading large sections of carbonized papyri buried by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79AD. The Vesuvius Challenge provides the first near-complete reading of one scroll and confirms certain previously unknown books by the Epicurean Philodemus. These discoveries are being hailed as among the most important in recent decades for papyrology and, especially, for classical studies, offering new insights into both Hellenistic and Roman texts after almost two thousand years of silence. The Vesuvius Challenge The papyri recovered from Herculaneum are the only surviving library from classical antiquity, as they were carbonized by the heat and ash of the Mount Vesuvius eruption