Dr. Kenneth Lapatin (J. Paul Getty Museum), The Villa dei Papiri at Herculaneum: Early Excavations and New Discoveries
AND Professor Brent Seales (University of Kentucky), Unlost: Recovering the Text of the Unopenable Herculaneum Scrolls
Kenneth Lapatin: Since it was first explored in the eighteenth century by work crews under the direction of a Swiss military engineer employed by the Bourbon king of Naples, the so-called "Villa dei Papiri" at Herculaneum has yielded more sculpture than any other private residence from classical antiquity as well as frescoes, ivories, and its famed library of papyrus scrolls. This presentation surveys the history of the excavations and the finds recovered, from the 1750s up to the present day, when cutting-edge technologies like laser scans, machine learning, and artificial intelligence continue to reveal more about this extraordinary Roman luxury Villa, the artifacts housed there, and its owners and other inhabitants.
Brent Seales: The Herculaneum papyrus scrolls, buried and carbonized by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 CE and then excavated in the 18th century, are original, classical texts from the shelves of the only library to have survived from antiquity. In 1999, with more than 400 scrolls still unopened, methods for physical unwrapping were permanently halted. The intact scrolls present an enigmatic challenge: preserved by the fury of Vesuvius, yet still lost. Using a non-invasive approach, we have now shown how to recover their texts, rendering them "unlost". The path we have forged uses high energy physics, artificial intelligence, and the collective power of a global, scientific community inspired by prizes, collaborative generosity, and the common goal of shared glory: reading original classical texts for the first time in 2000 years.
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