The scrolls, which were buried in a Herculaneum library and excavated 260 years ago, are easily damaged or destroyed by unwrapping, so researchers have been unable to read them without risk.
But by using X-ray phase contrast tomography — a 3-D technique used in medicine for soft biological tissue — they have been able to reveal writing on the tightly wrapped scrolls without unrolling them, wrote a team led by Vito Mocella of the Naples-based Institute for Microelectronics and Microsystems of the National Council of Research.
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“This technology, when perfected, does open the way to rediscovering a lot more ancient literature,” he said.
