X-Rays Open Secrets Of Ancient Scrolls

"Researchers in Europe have managed to read from an ancient scroll buried when Mt. Vesuvius erupted in 79 AD. The feat is all the more remarkable because the scroll was never opened."

"The Vesuvius eruption famously destroyed Pompeii. But it also devastated the nearby town of Herculaneum. A villa there contained a library stacked with papyrus scrolls, and the hot gas and ash preserved them."

"Sort of."

"'To be honest, being from Kentucky, they look like pieces of coal," says Brent Seales, a computer scientist at the University of Kentucky who has held some of the scrolls. "You look at the end and you can see the circular markings of how it's been rolled, but it looks more like the growth marks of a tree.'"