Scientists decipher charred scrolls without unrolling them by tracing lead in ink

Researchers burned and rolled their own papyri and read the text inside by detecting lead in the ink, in a study published last Wednesday in PLoS ONE. The approach could help decipher more than 1,000 carbonized scrolls from Herculaneum, buried in Vesuvius's AD 79 eruption, after CT scans and machine learning—and a $60,000 Vesuvius Challenge prize last year—had begun virtual unrolling.