This appeared a day or so ago
Inside the library of
Vesuvius’s secret scrolls
By Tom Kington
The Times
11:07PM June 22, 2024
The three rooms in a Naples library that hold secrets about the origins of Western civilisation are deceptively simple, lined with wood and grey metal cabinets and smelling of old books.
Opening the door of a cabinet, Giovanni Bova slowly pulls out a drawer to check on nine black carbonised
lumps of papyrus scroll resting on translucent Japanese paper and cotton wool.
“The scrolls are safe, barring earthquakes bringing down the ceiling,” said Bova, the head of the collection.
Burnt and buried by the massive eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD79, the scorched scrolls are part of a library dug up during excavations of a wealthy villa at Herculaneum, Pompeii’s smaller neighbour, in 1752.
Stored at the National Library of Naples since the 1920s and believed to be the world’s only surviving ancient Roman library, the scrolls are making headlines as high-powered CT scans and artificial intelligence are successfully used to decipher them for the first time without unrolling them.
Until now, efforts to unroll the scrolls have mostly produced shredded, crumbling fragments, so historians are drooling at the possibility that AI can find unknown, intact works by Sophocles, Sappho or Aristotle, revolutionising our knowledge of the genesis of western art, science and philosophy.
It is a prospect that makes the hushed, book-lined home of the scrolls a surreal contrast to the explosive works they may contain.
During a visit this month, The Times was escorted through the labyrinthine, frescoed corridors of the library, which is housed in the 18th-century former royal palace in the heart of the city.
Up sweeping staircases, past sleepy students studying the library’s thousands of works and balconies offering stunning views over the bay of Naples,
the scrolls are tucked away in three marble floored rooms where six-metre-high ceilings and the solid palace walls keep out the summer heat.
Without climate-controlled, locked vaults, Bova leads a team guarding wooden cabinets installed in the 1920s that hold about 500 still rolled scrolls and metal cabinets containing 1840 fragments left over from attempts to unroll another 300.
In the corner of one room stands the machine invented by a priest in the 18th century that used hooks to slowly unroll them, often destroying them in the process.
“You can still see the membrane from animal guts they used to try and keep the papyrus from disintegrating as it unrolled,” Bova said.
Occasionally it worked. A cabinet in holds an intact, four-metre stretch of unrolled papyrus containing ruminations on rhetoric by Philodemus, the epicurean philosopher who created the library while he was living at the villa of the Roman aristocrat Lucius Calpurnius Piso at Herculaneum.
But the cabinets are also packed with shelves containing torn and crumbling fragments, among them a poorly preserved work with geometric triangle designs by Demetrius of Laconia, a 2nd-century BC Greek epicurean philosopher.
While most works are in Greek, 80 fragments are in Latin, including a description by Seneca the Elder of the 31BC Battle of Actium between the forces of Octavian and Cleopatra. “This could be part of Seneca’s lost history of Rome and the rest may be in there somewhere,” Bova said, waving at the cabinets.
Down the corridor an infra-red microscope set up Graziano Ranocchia, of Pisa University, is used to glean new words from fragments of Demetrius’s treatise On the Shape of God.
Using the technique infrared hyperspectral imaging, Ranocchia has this year boosted the legibility of fragments to discover the exact burial spot of Plato in Athens.
But the headline-grabbing breakthrough last year was the use of a CT (computed tomography) scanner in Oxfordshire by a Kentucky University computer scientist, Brent Seales, to peer inside an untouched, 13-metre long rolled scroll.
He obtained data which was unscrambled this year using AI by researchers who earned a $US700,000 ($1.05m) prize funded by Silicon Valley investors. They discovered 15 columns of text by Philodemus in which he ponders what makes something desirable, writing: “We do not immediately believe things that are scarce to be absolutely more pleasant.”
The text came from one of two scrolls Seales obtained from Paris, where they had been kept since they were sent to Napoleon in 1802 by the then Bourbon ruler of Naples.
To keep the discoveries coming, Bova flew to the UK in October with three never-unrolled scrolls from the cabinets. “We 3D-printed cases that fit exactly, booked two tickets and they travelled on the plane on the seat next to me, never leaving my sight,” he said.
Competitors are now trying to crack the data from the scans of the three new scrolls as well as from the second, unstudied scroll from Paris.
Like last year, the initial prize will be for the AI expert who can decipher one word, followed by another prize for finding entire tracts.
“There are 4000-5000 people working on this and we are very close to getting a word,” said Seales, who was in Naples this week to meet the director of the library, Silvia Sciponi.
“I have been watching the interior of a scroll emerge from the mist – it’s imminent. Once you see a word, you are 90 per cent there, it’s like the rollercoaster is over the top and rushing down,” added Seales, who hopes to scan all 500 intact scrolls in Naples and has $US2 million in funding from Elon Musk, making the Tesla and Twitter/X tycoon the project’s biggest backer.
While historians around the world are on tenterhooks to know if Philodemus’s library will reveal lost Greek tragedies and never-read ruminations by the founders of western philosophy, Seales said he was hoping for something about the early years of Christianity.
Sciponi said: “The huge responsibility we have looking after the scrolls is matched by our curiosity as technology now gives us back works we thought were lost. We also need to consider protecting them better from volcanic dust because Vesuvius may erupt again.” BURIED TREASURES
AD79
The eruption of Mount Vesuvius buries Pompeii in pumice stones and ash, and engulfs Herculaneum in super-heated, boiling mud that instantly seals scrolls kept in the library of a wealthy family’s villa, carbonising them but keeping out the oxygen that would have allowed them to burn completely.
1752 Workmen hired by the Bourbon rulers of Naples discover what is today (Saturday) known as the Villa of the Papyri.
1756 Antonio Piaggio, a Vatican priest, uses a machine equipped with hooks and silk thread to slowly unroll scrolls, a few millimetres a day, inadvertently damaging many of them.
1802 King Ferdinand IV of Naples gives six rolls to Napoleon, which are taken to France.
1810 Eighteen scrolls are given to the future George IV. The king gives four to the University of Oxford’s Bodleian Library. The others are in the British Library.
2023 The Silicon Valley investors Nat Friedman and Daniel Gross join Brent Seales, a computer scientist, to launch the Vesuvius Challenge, awarding more than $US1 million over the year to competitors deciphering data from scans of scrolls.
Here is the link:
https://www.theaustralian.com.au/world/the-times/inside-the-library-of-vesuviuss-secret-scrolls/news-story/d02ab9aa3ef5fc47eab21b1ada36dcee Can I say I am drooling too to see what is eventually revealed as the scrolls are hopefully read!
David.
US President Joe Biden and former US President and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump participate in the first presidential debate of the 2024 elections. Picture: AFP.
President Biden, battling a hoarse voice and sometimes stammering, delivered an unsteady performance Thursday evening in his first debate against former President Donald Trump.
It was the sort of showing Democrats feared the incumbent, who polls show faces greater concerns about his age and vitality than Trump, would deliver. It lacked the energy and combativeness Biden mustered for his State of the Union speech earlier this year, an appearance that gave Democrats some optimism about his campaign vigor.
The challenger mostly kept his composure, something he isn’t known for. The much-talked-about mute buttons -- put in place because Trump so frequently talked over Biden when they debated in 2020 -- didn’t seem to come into play often.In
an election season where many Americans wish they had other options, the
face-off allowed the two rivals to highlight the vulnerabilities of their
opponent to the slim set of voters who remain undecided.
Their high-stakes meeting in Atlanta, hosted by CNN and moderated by the network’s Jake Tapper and Dana Bash, delivered some firsts. It was the first modern debate between a sitting and former president, the first featuring a felon, and the first held in a studio with no live audience since the Kennedy-Nixon debate in 1960.
Those factors influenced the dynamics of a 90-minute show that brimmed with insults and policy contrasts, a face-off held much earlier in an election year than is typical. The race is narrowly divided nationally, but Trump leads in several battleground states.
“Biden experienced the worst opening 15 minutes of a presidential debate ever,” said Aaron Kall, the University of Michigan’s director of debate.
Both old, but one looked older
The two men are just a few years apart in age, but Biden looked older in his presentation during an exhausting evening in front of what was expected to be a sizable television audience. A person familiar with the president’s health said he is suffering from a cold.
Biden also had his share of gaffes. As he answered a question about the national debt and started talking about health policy, he stammered and appeared to lose his train of thought at the end of his answer.
“Making sure that we’re able to make every single solitary person eligible for what I’ve been able to do with the Covid. Excuse me, with dealing with everything we have to do with,” Biden said. “Look, if we finally beat Medicare.”
Trump responded: “Well he’s right. He did beat Medicare. He beat it to death.” Trump and his allies in the days leading up to the debate had put forward unfounded accusations that Biden, 81, would arrive on stage with performance-enhancing chemicals in his system. It was an allegation Trump, 78, also made before he debated Biden in 2020.
Age is a top-of-mind issue for many voters, and the current president is the oldest person to serve in the office. Trump, if elected, would be poised to claim that record near the end of a second term.
But the challenger, unlike the incumbent, remained robust in his presentation throughout. He also sought to highlight Biden’s stammers, including after a meandering answer to a question about immigration.
“I really don’t know what he said at the end of that sentence,” Trump said. “I don’t think he knows what he said either.” Asked about the issue of age, Biden had a line at the ready: “This guy is three years younger and a lot less competent,” he said.
Trump responded to a question about his age by saying he would like Biden to take a cognitive test and release the results, triggering a chuckle from the president.
Sharpest attacks
If there was any uncertainty, the debate made clear neither man has any respect for the other, despite their joint status in an elite club of living past and present White House occupants. As they took the stage, neither moved to shake hands as has often been customary.
Biden challenged Trump over reports that he has called Americans who died in war “losers” and “suckers.” Referencing his son, the late Beau Biden, an army officer, Biden said: “My son was not a loser. He’s not a sucker. You’re the sucker. You’re the loser.” Trump again asserted he had never made the comments. Trump’s chief of staff at the time has confirmed he used those derogatory words.
The former president also suggested Biden isn’t fit for office. “He’s not equipped to be president,” Trump said. “His presidency, without question, the worst president, the worst presidency, in the history of our country. We shouldn’t be having a debate about it. There’s nothing to debate.” Biden sought to highlight Trump’s past and potential future legal issues and suggested at one point that the thrice-married man has the “morals of an alley cat.” Soft landing or surging prices The economy is typically listed by the largest share of voters when they are asked by pollsters what their top issues are in this presidential race. Trump talked down the current environment, while Biden argued things are looking up, even though more work remains to be done.
Trump sought to hang the issue of inflation, which has slowed considerably but remains especially painful for lower and middle-income Americans, directly on Biden. “Inflation is killing our country,” he said.
“Working-class people are still in trouble,” Biden acknowledged. “We’re working to bring down the price at the kitchen table, and that’s what we’re going to get done.” The president also repeatedly sought to remind viewers of some of the bad things that played out during Trump’s tenure.
“We had an economy that was in free fall,” he said. “The pandemic was so badly handled. Many people were dying. All he said was, ‘It’s not that serious. Just inject a little bleach in your arm.’” Trump at a Covid briefing in 2020 pondered whether treatments involving light or disinfectants should be studied.
Abortion
Trump continued his effort to stake out a Republican abortion position after the Supreme Court ruling overturning Roe v. Wade galvanized voters in support of abortion access.
First he praised the justices he put on the court for the ruling, repeating a baseless claim that “every legal scholar” wanted Roe v. Wade overruled. But then he stressed that he supports exemptions to any abortion law for rape, incest and the life of the mother, arguing that while some don’t agree, “you’ve got to get elected.” Trump also appeared to commit to allowing the abortion pill to remain available across the United States. “The Supreme Court just approved the abortion pill. I agree with their decision to have done that. I will not block it,” Trump said.
Biden, who has made abortion rights a central plank of his campaign and has targeted Trump for appointing three justices to the Supreme Court that overturned Roe, seized on Trump’s statement that the issue should be left to the states, saying it was “a little like saying, ‘We’re going to turn civil rights back to the states.’” The ruling has unfurled a patchwork of laws across the country, and created uncertainty over related issues, including the future availability of abortion pills from mail-order pharmacies. The debate came shortly after the Supreme Court said it would allow emergency abortions in Idaho without deciding key issues in the case.
No rapport
During the commercial break, Biden and Trump remained at their lecterns and looked ahead as photographers took photos, according to a White House pool report. The candidates didn’t say anything or make eye contact with each other.
Toward the end of the debate the two began bickering about golf, as older men sometimes do. “He can’t hit a ball 50 yards,” Trump said of Biden. That prompted a retort from Biden: “I’m happy to play golf with you, if you carry your own bag.”
Dow Jones
Here is the link:
https://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/the-wall-street-journal/joe-biden-crashed-in-first-clash-with-donald-trump-and-other-takeaways-from-the-debate/news-story/a0a3adc98329426667195742b0723c7f
I just found the whole thing pathetic and sad – and a serious worry for Australia going forward with either of these men in the Oval Office.
David.