For centuries, ancient scrolls torched nearly 2,000 years ago in the eruption of Mount Vesuvius have remained a mystery.
Once buried in hot rocks, ash and lava, the scrolls are so fragile and carbonized that they fall apart at the touch. Since their discovery in 1752, various attempts to read them — splitting them open and scraping away each slice of ancient paper with a knife, pouring mercury between the layers, soaking them in a mix of gelatin and acetic acid — have destroyed them or rendered them illegible.