Ancient Greek Scroll's Hidden Contents Revealed Through Infrared Imaging

"More than 200 years ago, scholars glued the remains of an ancient papyrus scroll onto cardboard to preserve it. But the scroll, a history of Plato's Academy, also had writing on the back. Now scholars have deployed imaging technology to read what's been concealed."

"This scroll came from a library in Herculaneum, near Mount Vesuvius. And it was caught in the famous eruption of that volcano nearly 2,000 years ago — the same eruption that buried the city of Pompeii."

"The scroll doesn't look like much now. It's blackened and in tatters. In fact, it looks like what you'd find at the bottom of your barbecue."

"But the same processes that charred the scroll and the rest of that library also preserved it, according to papyrus scholar Graziano Ranocchia from the Italian National Research Council."

"'Unless Vesuvius erupted, they would never have survived,' he says."