\n A new study, published September 16 in the scientific journal PLOS One<\/a>, may offer another clue toward this daunting goal. By re-creating the papyri with inks containing varying amounts of lead, the researchers found that X-ray imaging could more easily detect ink with lead \u2014 present in some of the ancient scrolls \u2014 than nonmetallic ink.\n <\/p>\n \n So far, only a few of the real scrolls have been virtually unrolled. The study\u2019s findings could help identify which Herculaneum scrolls are the next best candidates to noninvasively unroll and decipher, the authors suggest.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cThe scrolls are really just like a brick of charcoal that you buy for your barbecue. There\u2019s not a lot of difference,\u201d said lead author Douglas Seiler, a research volunteer with the University of California, Berkeley<\/a>. \u201cIt\u2019s just carbon, and that\u2019s what the problem has been in reading these things. The ink is made from soot.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n AI has difficulty picking up the ink in scrolls that have no metal, as it is essentially \u201cdark carbon on dark carbon,\u201d Seiler said. But when lead is introduced, the ink lights up in the X-ray scans, allowing AI to better detect the text.\n <\/p>\n \n The next step after re-creating the scrolls, Seiler added, is to test the real Herculaneum ones to determine what percentage contain lead. \u201cIf they took these scrolls one by one to a facility, they could find out in a matter of minutes whether or not they had lead in them,\u201d he said. \u201cA lead signal is very strong.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n To date, one entire scroll<\/a> and passages from others have been deciphered, largely thanks to the Vesuvius Challenge<\/a>, a project launched in 2023 that encourages researchers to decode scrolls for cash prizes.\n <\/p>\n \n For the most part, the scrolls studied are the ones in the best shape, \u201cthe nice ones that look like toilet paper or a roll of a paper towel \u2014 symmetrical,\u201d Seiler said. But there are more than 600 unopened scrolls, and many in the Naples library are crushed and in fragments. For these scrolls, the best method for virtually unrolling and deciphering text would be to scan for lead first, according to Seiler.\n <\/p>\n \n Computer scientist Brent Seales, cocreator of the Vesuvius Challenge, first uncovered the metallic ink in Herculaneum scrolls in 2009 while studying one of them at the University of Kentucky in Lexington. Later, a 2016 study<\/a> identified lead in two other fragmented scrolls, suggesting that the metal was intentionally added into the ancient ink.\n <\/p>\n \n To find out whether the lead could be useful in decoding the scrolls, Seiler and a team of researchers re-created multiple scrolls using Egyptian papyrus and carbon ink similar to that used in Pompeii. After writing their own passages \u2014 including material from the Bible, scripts from Alfred Hitchcock movies and the television show \u201cThe Outer Limits\u201d \u2014 the researchers rolled up these scrolls and charred them in a low-oxygen, high-temperature furnace to carbonize them, mimicking the conditions that preserved the original scrolls during the eruption of Mount Vesuvius.\n <\/p>\n \n The team sent the replica scrolls to researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Gaithersburg, Maryland, to decipher. Using X-ray tomography and virtual unrolling techniques, the researchers were able to reconstruct the scrolls and identify readable text at each lead concentration level.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cIn fact, they picked up the images much, much better than we thought,\u201d Seiler added.\n <\/p>\n![\"Friends](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/img-3799.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"Physicist](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/seilervanbibber.jpg\")
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