Researchers are deliberately burning modern papyrus in an unusual experiment aimed at helping scientists recover writings trapped inside the charred Herculaneum scrolls for nearly 2,000 years.
In a recent paper published in PLOS One, a scientist from Berkeley SETI turned his attention from the cosmos to Earth’s past, describing advances that could aid efforts to read ruined scrolls with X-rays and LLMs.
In a nod to lead author Douglas Seiler’s work at Berkeley SETI, the simulated Herculaneum scrolls were inscribed with lines from science fiction media such as Star Wars and The Outer Limits, along with passages from the Bible, on real Egyptian papyrus using reed pens and traditional Japanese ink. Because the researchers knew exactly what had been written on the experimental scrolls, they could compare the inscriptions with what could later be detected after carbonization, potentially helping refine techniques for identifying readable Herculaneum scrolls.
Copying the Herculaneum Scrolls
The scrolls were placed in a container and burned in a high-temperature furnace to recreate conditions similar to those experienced by the famous Herculaneum scrolls during the Mount Vesuvius eruption of 79 CE.
While Pompeii may be the better-known of the cities destroyed by the eruption, Herculaneum preserved an extraordinary collection of ancient papyri. The scrolls could contain works otherwise lost to time, yet many remain unreadable by conventional means because of their carbonization and extreme fragility.
“The value in this project is practically unquantifiable,” said Berkeley archaeology graduate student Leah Packard-Grams, who consulted on the project as a papyrologist. “The stakes are the largest in the history of Greek literature.”
Scientists have previously used advanced scanning and computational methods to read portions of the Herculaneum scrolls without physically opening them. However, the new study instead created experimental scrolls with known contents, allowing researchers to determine how well different techniques could detect writing after the papyrus had been carbonized.
Lead in the Ink
Seiler’s team found that even tiny amounts of lead in the ink absorbed X-rays at a much higher rate than the surrounding papyrus, producing greater contrast and making the writing easier to detect.
“With lead in the ink, you would get a huge friggin’ signature, so you really need to be looking for scrolls with lead in them,” Seiler said. “They’re having problems reading a lot of them because of the low contrast of carbon ink on carbon paper. We’re relatively certain that if they start searching for lead, or they let us search for lead, it will help this whole process. This is the Holy Grail.”
The researchers say the sensitivity of the technique could allow lead-containing ink to be identified without relying solely on the sophisticated scanning equipment used for virtual unwrapping. Portable X-ray fluorescence instruments could instead help researchers screen scrolls for traces of lead, potentially identifying promising candidates for more detailed scanning.
Opening the Herculaneum Scrolls
The Herculaneum scrolls were rediscovered in the 18th century, and researchers soon made the first attempts to delicately unroll them. Unfortunately, early efforts damaged or destroyed some of the fragile carbonized papyri, permanently losing portions of their contents.
Some surviving fragments from attempts to physically open the scrolls have tested positive for lead in the ink, giving researchers hope that the technique could prove useful for identifying Herculaneum scrolls particularly well suited for X-ray imaging. However, systematic lead screening has not been incorporated into modern virtual-unwrapping efforts, leaving it unclear how widespread lead-containing ink may be among the collection.
“Almost everything from antiquity has been destroyed,” Seiler said. “There’s very little left except papyrus that was in a dry climate or some works that were copied by scribes and transferred down. But some of the Herculaneum scrolls aren’t copies. These are books directly from the ancient world frozen in time. They’re actually from Roman intellectual circles.”
Herculaneum may not be the end of the story. The team has also used X-ray techniques to identify lead in ink on first-century Egyptian papyri. Researchers hope that evidence of lead-containing inks elsewhere during roughly the same period could increase the likelihood of finding additional examples among the Herculaneum collection.
The paper, “A Model Carbonized Papyrus Scroll Opens a Novel Path to Identifying Readable Scrolls of the Herculaneum Library,” appeared in PLOS One on September 16, 2026.
Ryan Whalen covers science and technology for The Debrief. He holds an MA in History and a Master of Library and Information Science with a certificate in Data Science. He can be contacted at ryan@thedebrief.org, and follow him on Twitter @mdntwvlf.