Overview
- A PLOS One paper published Wednesday, Sept. 16, 2026, reports controlled experiments that point to a practical way to find and read some Herculaneum scrolls without opening them.
- The team wrote on real Egyptian papyrus with inks that included varying amounts of lead nitrate, rolled the sheets into scrolls, carbonized them in a furnace, and scanned the results with CT and virtual unwrapping software.
- They found even tiny traces of lead in the ink produced a much stronger X‑ray signal than the carbonized papyrus, making letters far easier to detect in CT images.
- Because the lead signal can be detected with handheld X‑ray fluorescence (XRF) devices, researchers propose using portable XRF to triage which scrolls should get costly, high-resolution CT scans.
- The work links physics, chemistry, conservation and classics and could speed recovery of lost texts, but the team cautions that the technique’s value depends on how common lead-containing inks are across the Herculaneum collection and that systematic screening has not yet begun.