New York Times: “Unlocking Scrolls Preserved in Eruption of Vesuvius, Using X-Ray Beams”

Thanks to Paula Hicken, formerly of the Maxwell Institute at BYU, for bringing this item to my attention:

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/21/science/more-progress-made-toward-learning-contents-of-herculaneum-scrolls.html?ref=science&_r=0

BYU’s Maxwell Institute blazed the way on this effort, beginning back when the Institute was still known as the Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies (or FARMS), and a video was produced about it several years ago entitled Out of the Ashes.  I was, for a time, more or less in overall charge of the digitizing work at Herculaneum, and we actually had people (Steve and Susan Booras) working in Naples.

But the Institute has long since disengaged from the project.

(For the record, I think that that disengagement was ill-advised, and that severing ties with the project needlessly damaged both the project itself and the Maxwell Institute.)

There are still faculty at BYU (but unaffiliated with the Maxwell Institute) who are very much involved:  http://guides.lib.byu.edu/content.php?pid=82036&sid=609011

The project wonderfully illustrates an intersection between cutting-edge technology and the study of antiquity.  Back in the glory days of FARMS, engineers and experts on the ancient world worked together very enthusiastically and productively.