The numbers given here exclude mere fragments. Nothing of any importance was discovered after this date.
In the spring and summer of the following year, 337 Greek papyri and 18 Latin papyri were found in the Library. In the spring of 1753, 11 papyri were found in a room just south of the tablinum, and in the summer of the same year, 250 were found in a room to the north. The first were found in the autumn of 1752, fourteen years after the first discovery of Herculaneum, in and near the tablinum, and only numbered some 21 volumes and fragments, contained in two wooden cases. They were found in four places on four occasions. The woodwork of some of the presses that had contained them dropped to dust on exposure and many rolls were found lying about loosely. The papyri were found at a depth of about 120 feet (37 metres). Finally, a faint trace of letters was seen on one of the blackened masses, which was found to be a roll of papyrus, disintegrated by decay and damp, full of holes, cut, crushed, and crumpled. In appearance the rolls resembled lumps of charcoal and many were thrown away as such. A large number of papyri, after being buried eighteen centuries, have been found in the Villa named after them. Įthel Ross Barker noted in her 1908 Buried Herculaneum: Īppearance of the rolls. There may still be a lower section of the Villa's collection that remains buried. In 1752, workmen of the Bourbon royal family accidentally discovered what is now known as the Villa of the Papyri. They were then preserved by the layers of cement-like rock. This intense parching took place over an extremely short period of time, in a room deprived of oxygen, resulting in the scrolls' carbonization into compact and highly fragile blocks. For example, as many as 44 works discovered were written by the 1st-century BC Epicurean philosopher and poet Philodemus, a resident of Herculaneum, who possibly formed the library, or whose library was incorporated in it.ĭue to the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD, bundles of scrolls were carbonized by the intense heat of the pyroclastic flows. The majority of classical texts referred to by other classical authors are lost, and there is hope that the continuing work on the library scrolls will discover some of these. The evolution of techniques to do this continues. However, reading the scrolls is extremely difficult, and can risk destroying them. The papyri, containing a number of Greek philosophical texts, come from the only surviving library from antiquity that exists in its entirety. The Herculaneum papyri are more than 1,800 papyrus scrolls found in the 18th century in the Herculaneum Villa of the Papyri, which were carbonized when the villa was engulfed by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD. Image contrast and brightness were enhanced to better visualize the details visible to the naked eye on their external surface. Photos of the papyrus fragments PHerc.1103 (a) and PHerc.110 (b,c).
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