A retired inventor charred homemade scrolls to find which Herculaneum rolls X-rays can read
The ink and the burned papyrus are both carbon, so X-rays struggle to tell letters from page. In a new PLOS One study, lead added to test ink showed up clearly, and the authors want unopened scrolls screened for it.
The Scientist · Science desk
What happened
- A PLOS One paper published on Sept. 16, 2026 by Douglas Seiler of UC Berkeley, Jacob Michael LaManna of NIST, David Kreimer and colleagues takes up the problem of reading unopened Herculaneum scrolls.
- The team wrote on new papyrus with inks at several lead concentrations, carbonized the scrolls in a high-temperature furnace, and then reread some of the words with X-ray tomography and custom software.
- On flat fragments of charred test papyrus, letters written without lead were invisible in the X-ray images, while letters written with lead-bearing ink could be seen.
- The authors propose scanning unopened scrolls for lead first and virtually unrolling only the ones that contain it, because X-rays separate lead from papyrus more easily.
- Vesuvius buried the library under 65 to 70 feet of rock and ash in 79 CE, carbonizing the scrolls and leaving many of them too fragile to study.
Why it matters
- What's now possible capability Because the students' passages were recorded before the papyrus burned, an unrolling program's output can be scored word by word against a known answer, with no ancient artifact in the beam.
- What it limits constraint The screening idea only reorders the queue if ancient ink carries enough lead to see, and no method for checking the ancient scrolls has been built yet, so the practical gain is still untested.
- Who has to decide decision Anyone allocating scarce scan time on fragile rolls now has a cheap test to apply before tomography, which changes which scrolls go first rather than how they are imaged.
- What doesn't add up contradiction Phys.org credits the already-opened scrolls with previously unknown writings by Epicurus, Discover names Philodemus, and Live Science describes Epicureans and Stoics plus a passage on Plato's burial place, so the tally of what the library has yielded depends on which account you read.
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Both the ink and the charred papyrus are mostly carbon, and in a scan the two look so similar that traces of writing are hard to pick out [10]. A sharper scanner runs into the same problem, because two materials that absorb X-rays at nearly the same rate stay hard to separate at any resolution. So the thing to change is the material. Lead is heavy, X-rays distinguish it from papyrus more easily, and lead has already been found in some Herculaneum letters [12][13].
The model scroll was built to test exactly that. Douglas Seiler, a retired inventor who had worked in real estate and banking, funded the study himself and worked with chemists to prepare inks containing different amounts of lead [20][21]. High school students wrote passages from Star Wars and the Bible on fresh papyrus with reed pens [3]. Seiler put the roll in a steel container in his home lab and heated it in a furnace until it charred [2]. Leah Packard-Grams, a papyrus specialist at UC Berkeley, helped check the test inks [26]. "This provides a low-risk method to develop algorithms without endangering the priceless artifacts," the team wrote [9].
X-ray fluorescence found lead at every concentration the team had mixed [17]. Jacob LaManna, a physicist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, scanned a charred test scroll to build a 3D image of its tightly rolled layers [23]. Michael Cyrus Daugherty then adapted software originally written to examine the rolled layers inside lithium-ion batteries, adjusting it to follow the uneven papyrus and digitally flatten it [4]. Among the words they could make out were "the children of" [5].
The study does not show how much lead the ancient scrolls hold, or where in the roll it sits. The team set the concentrations in its own inks [20], and it still needs a way to check ancient scrolls, nearly 2,000 of which came out of the villa in the 1750s [24][19]. Not all of the model scroll's writing could be deciphered, though the scans did separate the text from the papyrus under it [6]. A separate handheld scanner did detect lead in the charred test scroll [18]. That detection is the screening step in miniature.
The eruption was in 79 CE and the paper came out in 2026, a gap of 1,947 years [27]. "But some of the Herculaneum scrolls aren't copies. These are books directly from the ancient world frozen in time," Seiler said in a press release [25].
What to watch
- Whether a survey of the unopened Herculaneum scrolls finds lead, and in what fraction of them.
Clarity's read
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- Evidence62
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- [1]
The team recreated carbonized scrolls by writing on new papyrus using ink with various concentrations of lead, then heating them in a high-temperature furnace to carbonize them; X-ray tomography combined with a custom software program allowed the team to reread some of the words they had written.
- [2]
Seiler put a roll of papyrus that students had written on inside a steel container in his home lab and heated it in a furnace until it charred.
- [3]
High school students had written passages from Star Wars and the Bible on the papyrus with reed pens.
- [4]
Michael Cyrus Daugherty adapted software originally developed to examine the rolled layers inside lithium-ion batteries, adjusting the program to follow the uneven papyrus and digitally flatten its layers, allowing some of the handwriting to become readable.
- [5]
Among the words the team could make out on the test scroll were "the children of".
- [6]
While not all the writings could be deciphered, the method was able to detect differences between the text and the papyrus it was written on.
- [7]
A study published Sept. 16, 2026 in PLOS One was authored by Douglas Seiler, an affiliate of the University of California, Berkeley, Jacob Michael LaManna of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, David Kreimer of UC Berkeley, and colleagues.
- [8]
During the 79 CE eruption of Mount Vesuvius the scrolls were covered by 65 to 70 feet (20 to 21 meters) of rock and ash, carbonizing them in the extreme heat and making them very brittle; while some have been opened and read, many have proven too fragile to study.
- [9]
"This provides a low-risk method to develop algorithms without endangering the priceless artifacts," the team wrote in the study.
- [10]
Both the ink and the charred papyrus are made mostly of carbon, and they look so similar in scans that traces of writing can be difficult to distinguish.
- [11]
The homemade scrolls could help improve reading software without risking ancient manuscripts, because developers could compare a program's reconstruction with the words the students actually wrote before the papyrus was charred.
- [12]
Since X-rays can more easily distinguish between papyrus and lead, the authors suggest scanning the scrolls for lead and then attempting to virtually unroll those that contain it.
- [13]
Some of the Herculaneum scroll letters have been found to contain lead.
- [14]
Discover magazine reports that recovered texts include previously unknown writings by the philosopher Philodemus.
- [15]
Phys.org reports that some of the scrolls have been opened and read, revealing previously unknown writings by Epicurus and other ancient thinkers.
- [16]
Live Science reports that earlier digital unrolling results helped reveal the writings of ancient philosophers, largely Epicureans and Stoics, with one section describing Plato's final burial place.
- [17]
X-ray fluorescence was able to detect lead in the test scrolls at each lead concentration level.
- [18]
A separate handheld scanner detected lead in the charred test scroll, supporting the proposed screening step.
- [19]
Nearly 2,000 papyrus scrolls were found at a villa in the ancient town of Herculaneum in the 1750s; the villa was likely owned by Julius Caesar's father-in-law.
- [20]
Seiler funded the research himself, working with chemists to prepare inks containing different amounts of lead.
- [21]
Seiler is a retired inventor who had worked in real estate and banking.
- [22]
On flat fragments of charred test papyrus, letters written without lead were invisible in X-ray images, while those containing lead could be seen.
- [23]
Physicist Jacob LaManna at the National Institute of Standards and Technology scanned a charred test scroll to create a 3D image of its tightly rolled layers.
- [24]
Researchers still need to develop a way to check ancient scrolls and test whether those containing lead have writing they can recover.
- [25]
"But some of the Herculaneum scrolls aren't copies. These are books directly from the ancient world frozen in time," Seiler said in a press release.
- [26]
Leah Packard-Grams, a UC Berkeley papyrus specialist, helped check the team's test inks.
- [27]
1,947 years separate the 79 CE eruption from the study's 2026 publication.
Sources
3 independent publishers whose own reporting we read for this story.
- discovermagazine.comA Retired Inventor Burned Homemade Scrolls to Help Read 2,000-Year-Old Texts Buried by Mount Vesuvius
1 article · September 16, 2026
- livescience.comNew trick could reveal text on 2,000-year-old scrolls charred by eruption of Mount Vesuvius
1 article · September 16, 2026
- phys.orgWe may soon be able to read long-lost ancient scrolls damaged by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius
1 article · September 16, 2026
Topics and entities
Topics
- Herculaneum papyri
- Synthetic ground-truth data
- X-ray tomography
- X-ray fluorescence
Entities
- Jacob Michael LaManna
- PLOS ONE
- Michael Cyrus Daugherty
- University of California, Berkeley
- National Institute of Standards and Technology
- Leah Packard-Grams