Deciphering the ancient scrolls of Herculaneum | 60 Minutes Archive

60 Minutes rewind you have heard of Pompei the ancient Roman city destroyed when Mount vvus erupted in 79 ad less well known is the neighboring city of herculanum also buried by the volcano when the city was rediscovered in the 1700s excavators found what could be the richest repository of ancient Western wisdom a library filled with papyrus Scrolls Scholars think there could be unknown Greek and Latin masterpieces possibly early Christian writings even the first references to Jesus the problem is the volcanic heat left the Scrolls so charred and brittle no one has been able to open them without breaking them into pieces we heard three Scholars might finally have found a way to unravel The Mystery of the Scrolls so we traveled to Italy to see what we could uncover about the Scrolls of herculanum the Italian city of ercolano sits along the Bay of Naples on the western slope of Mount vvus the city bustles with the chaos of Italian traffic and the Easy Flow of Italian life it's not a wealthy place but beneath these narrow streets lies buried treasure the ancient Roman Seaside town of herculanum in tuned along with Pompei in 79 ad the modern city is built on top of the ancient city there's no archaeological site in the world that matches this we went to herculanum with Andrew Wallace hadel founding director of the herculanum conservation project he showed us around the excavation site in all its ghostly Grandeur so what do you think is going on here were they trying to escape or were they hiding in my view they're not trying to get away by sea they're simply trying to take shelter under these folds theia blasted the town with successive massive surges of heat and Ash for 24 hours those surges they kill all human life and all other forms of life and then wave after wave they begin to build up these layers of Ash that com compacts into rocks until we have this this yeah 80 ft of 80 80 foot of solid rock that ended up preserving this place so well yeah the Paradox is that catastrophic destruction is also exceptionally good preservation preserving herculanum like a fossil in Amber everything Frozen in Time forgotten for nearly 17 centuries until Legend has it a farmer digging a well R struck the past they've built a really big public building here hrel told us herculanum was like the Malibu of the Roman Empire Oasis for the elite early excavators discovered this once opulent Villa today it looks like a cave in 79 ad it looked like this the Getty Villa in Malibu California is a recreation of the summer Retreat thought to belong to to the family of Julius Caesar tunneling around in the ancient Villa in Italy early treasure Hunters dug out statues and riches enough to fill a grand room in the Naples museum but the greatest treasures don't look valuable at all these are the Papyrus Scrolls of herculanum 1,800 ancient books written on sheets of plant fiber flash seared by the volcanic Heat found in the only remaining intact library from the ancient world so where was the library the library was there the precarious Villa excavation site is off limits to the public but Massimo osana former administrator of herculanum and Pompei took us deep inside the Library itself has not been excavated like this no not no he said there could be hundreds more Scrolls yet to be Earth back in here in the library it's it's a possibility maybe Aristotle who knows Aristotle yeah Ides yeah Virgil for example Scholars have been trying desperately to open the Scrolls since they were discovered the history of the unwrapping of the herculanum Scrolls is littered with failures everyone who had tried to open the Scrolls had left behind a hideous trail of of fragmentary result Brent seals a Brash computer scientist from the new world the University of Kentucky to be precise had what he thought was a brilliant idea to solve the 2,000-year-old mystery use modern medical imaging technology people were going to the doctor every day and they were doing a CT scan or an MRI and they were seeing inside their body completely non-invasively if you can do that to a human in the doctor's office why couldn't we see inside a scroll that was the thinking didn't think it was that far-fetched no in the Arcane world where academics spend their entire careers pouring over fragments of ancient texts Brent seals is a superstar he made his name digitally restoring damaged medieval manuscripts with software he had designed a colleague told him about the Scrolls of herculanum most housed at the library of Naples a few others in France and England England he considered them the ultimate Challenge the people are gone the cultures are gone the places are gone and yet like a time capsule you have this item that tells a story all locked away in that thing that looks like a little lump of charcoal they're all locked away he knew imaging technology could only reveal a jumble of letters like this to actually read the Scrolls he'd have to unroll them much like this medieval French scroll at the Morgan library in Manhattan but he'd have to do this virtually after years of trial and error he and his students thought they'd crack the code with algorithms and software he was cocky enough to announce at Oxford to an International Conference of Scholars who study ancient Papyrus that he could do what no one else had done I swung for the fence I gave him a talk where I said I think we we can read everything inside the herculanum Scrolls without opening them did you think the pists would come running to you with their Scrolls and say here here take a look at these I smile now because that is exactly what I thought didn't happen no so how hard is it to get your hands on these Scrolls I would say somewhere in the vicinity of nigh near impossible that's because they're so rare and so fragile curators are reluctant to let anyone handle them including a superstar like Brent seals they wouldn't relent even after he published a paper theorizing a better way to peer inside the scrolls with this a synchrotron a super powerful x-ray generated by electrons racing around this ring at almost the speed of light there are only about 50 in the world this one is in Britain the X-ray is this green beam 100 billion times stronger than any Hospital X-ray maybe it's coincidence but shortly after seals published his pioneering paper just to give you an idea Two Italian Scholars stepped forward and claimed they had had the same idea to use a synchrotron veto machella a physicist from Naples says he first learned about the Scrolls as a child I cannot remember exactly the age but 9 10 and gratiano renia a papist he studies ancient Roman Papyrus he pours over bits of herculanum Scrolls at the Naples Library most are fragments of Greek philosophy I am coming here and working on this papy every day call it academic competition call it ego but American Brent seals renia the papist and Italian physicist Mella became Fierce competitors all while fighting to make history as the first to reveal the contents of the Scrolls a gladiatorial wrestling match in the hallowed Halls of the Ivory Tower renia accuses machella of sabotaging his research seals as convinced the Italians poached his idea to use the synchrotron The Mystery of the Scrolls is playing out like some tragic Italian opera the story will continue after this you know they say Bill that um the reason academics argue is because the stakes are so low right the stakes actually are really high if you think about the possibility of revealing these manuscripts to the world from 2000 years ago that no one's ever read and okay so now we're going to argue with each other really I mean maybe we could do that later after we've read them but the two Italian Rivals used their European connections and convinced curators to let each of them and only them have limited access to a few Scrolls to scan with the synchrotron they leapfrogged over American Brent seals and raced to this one in gryl France machella got there first that it was hard for us to make out but he said his scan revealed letters these are letters see yes he said these are letters machella won International praise and headlines as the first person to see inside one of the ancient Scrolls of herculanum when papist renia scanned his Scrolls he said he did machella one better has anyone else found anything as clear as this nothing like this he said he saw phrases they would be persuaded this is I would be persuaded yeah right Brent seals is not persuaded you don't believe that hey I engage in wishful thinking all the time but at the end of the day I'm a scientist and Wishful Thinking is is not what Science is based on I was unable to replicate their results and so far I've not heard from from anyone who's been able to replicate them but with their findings published in scientific journals the Italian Scholars savored their achievements machella considers Brent Seal's criticism sour grapes Brent seals looked at your latest findings and he says he doesn't see any letters I know I don't know why you don't know why I don't know why I guess my threshold is somewhat different when I see writing you know it should line up it should be more than a letter or two you ought to be able to see text that looks like something you can actually read since he couldn't get access to the herculanum Scrolls seals looked elsewhere to prove his algorithms and software that led him to Jerusalem and this charred fragment a 1700 year-old scroll from a burned synagogue near the Dead Sea is there a line up here Israeli archaeologists didn't expect much but what seal software revealed was like a miracle what was it what was the Bible he resurrected all the surviving Hebrew script the oldest text of the Bible as we know it today the first two chapters of Leviticus in a scroll that prior to that was assumed to be nothing or so badly damaged no one would ever know this is what you would hope to see in the herculanum Scrolls absolutely I mean this is actually an identifiable text wrote below the line following his breakthrough in Jerusalem even Graziano rocchia admits Brent Seal's software is brilliant now the Naples Library which wouldn't let seals get his hands on the Scrolls is considering granting him access he is convinced the secrets of herculanum locked away in the Scrolls for 2,000 years are just Within Reach

Channel: 60 Minutes

Views: 970,552

Keywords: 60 Minutes, CBS News, scrolls of Herculaneum

Id: _BDq6tAuOu8

Length: 13min 22sec (802 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 03 2024