PROVO — A few days ago Gianluca Del Mastro boarded a plane bound for Italy carrying 40 ancient treasures "uncovered" during a three-month stint as a visiting researcher at Brigham Young University.
He actually left Utah with the same strange cargo he brought with him from the University of Naples: small charred chunks of papyrus that resemble charcoal more than ancient Greek and Latin writings. But BYU researchers enabled him to read the black ink on the blackened paper — revealing words written nearly 2,100 years ago.
The BYU team's use of technology developed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory allowed Del Mastro to take home passages from texts not available since 79 A.D., when Mount Vesuvius erupted and volcanic mud covered the scrolls in the city of Herculaneum, near modern Naples. The scrolls were found 251 years ago, in 1752, but merely became unreadable curiosities, often given as gifts to the famous, including Napoleon.
Del Mastro said the latest discoveries include new works by the philosopher Philodemus, a contemporary of Cicero and Julius Caesar. Many of the findings were smaller but no less significant.
"The single word, the single letter, the single trace of ink is important," Del Mastro said. "Our papyri are totally broken into more than 2,000 pieces. We can piece parts together if we have just a little letter because of the handwriting."
A documentary on the history of the scrolls and the remarkable process that deciphers them airs Sunday at 8 p.m. on KBYU, Ch. 11. PBS stations around the country will have the option to broadcast "Out of the Ashes" this fall, said Julie Walker, a BYU publicist who wrote, directed and produced the show.
BYU invited Del Mastro to Utah as a visiting research fellow, and his presence in the United States yielded an added bonus. While a trip to a Wisconsin chemical laboratory didn't end with a new gas-polymer technique for separating charred pages that remain unreadable chunks, it did show that gas can be used to preserve the papyri.
That's important because the edges of the scrolls crumble off with every passing year, taking with them letters that could solve puzzles.
"The gas can be used to laminate the papyrus and preserve it," said Roger Macfarlane, a BYU classics professor and the principal investigator on the project. "We were surprised when we learned the other day that we can still use the multispectral imaging through the laminate. We think that counts for a lot."
The digital camera is able to work in many different wavelengths. As the images move closer to infrared, the papyrus background becomes lighter, differentiating it from the black ink.
BYU's team began working with Italian researchers four years ago. It has compiled more than 30,000 images from the papyri in a digital library. The work is also the subject of an article in the May issue of Wired Magazine titled: "Tales from the Crypt: How a handful of Mormons with an infrared camera unlocked the secrets buried beneath Vesuvius."
The BYU team includes Macfarlane, Steve Booras and Dan Oswald of the Institute for the Study and Preservation of Ancient Religious Texts, and Doug Chabries of the college of engineering and technology. Booras and his wife Susan spent a year in Italy imaging more than 10,000 scroll fragments.
Other interviews for the documentary are drawn from scholars at Oxford, Michigan, UCLA, Texas A&M, the University of Naples, the Getty Research Institute and the British School of Rome.
Del Mastro, a researcher with the Center for Study of the Herculaneum Papyri at the National Library in Naples, is saying little about the exact discoveries made during his visit to BYU. He's saving those details for an upcoming conference of papyrologists.
That will be a big day for papyrologists and classicists alike, but thanks to BYU's imaging team, Del Mastro said, "Every day is a discovery for me."
E-MAIL: twalch@desnews.com