This is the first ever entirely unraveled papyrus scroll from the great Herculaneum library. In its entirety. The technology that allowed us to do this will make it easier to unravel every single one of the thousands of scrolls still waiting to be read within the library.
Herculaneum was buried in ash thousands of years ago, along with Pompeii. The above text is Philodemus’ On Gods, written around the 1st century BC. Other Hellenistic works are expected to follow it. Upwards of twenty-five-thousand scrolls are thought to still be down there. Tantalizing us.
Philodemus is thought to be the owner of the villa and a philosophy enthusiast, hence the abundance of such texts already discovered and partially decrypted before now. In my mind, this is the most important historical innovation of the millennium. This will revolutionize our understandings of Greece and Rome. It’s already helped us discover the precise location of Plato’s tomb.
I, for one, am hopeful about the preservation of the works of ancient female writers. Many women wrote manuals of proper behavior, or their own philosophical interpretations of the world. That’s what’s most exciting to me. Also learning the names of poetesses and philosophresses we’ve never heard of before. AHH this is so exciting
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