Villa of the Papyri
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Villa of the Papyri is a private house of ancient Roman city of Herculaneum (current commune of Ercolano) owned by Julius Caesar's father-in-law, Lucius Calpurnius Piso Caesoninus: its remains were first excavated in 1765 by Karl Weber. Its name derives from the discovery of a library in the house containing 1,800 carbonized papyrus scrolls.
The 245 m long seaside villa sited a few hundred metres from the nearest house in Herculaneum had four levels disposed in a series of terraces on the sloping site and was the most luxurious house in all of Herculaneum and Pompeii. It was complete with swimming pools, fountains and water features. The Villa of the Papyri also housed a large collection of eighty sculptures of magnificent quality, many of them now conserved in Naples.
At the time of the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 CE, the valuable library was packed in cases ready to be moved to safety when it was overtaken by the pyroclastic flow; the eruption eventually deposited some 30 m of volcanic ash over the site, charring the scrolls but preserving them— the only surviving library of Antiquity— as the ash hardened to form tuff.
Lucius Piso was a highly educated man and was a patron for both philosophers and poets. Many of the scrolls contain works by the philosopher Philodemus, a client of Piso. Such an unbalanced content to the section of the library that has come to light suggests that there may be more unrecovered scrolls: a second library.
There is still 2,800 m² left to be excavated of this villa suburbana, the most luxurious in the resort of Herculaneum. Beneath the excavated area, new excavations in the 1990s revealed two previously undiscovered floors to the villa, which was built in a series of terraces overlooking the sea.
The reason that the remainder of the site has not been excavated is that the Italian government is practicing a policy of conservation and not excavation, and is more interested in protecting what has already been uncovered. David W. Packard, who has funded conservation work at Herculaneum through his Packard Humanities Institute, has said that he is likely to be able to fund excavation of the Villa of the Papyri when the authorities agree to it; but no work will be permitted on the site until the completion of a feasibility report, which has been in preparation for some years. The report, the release of which was expected to occur in early 2006, has yet to emerge, to the consternation of a wide variety of scholars both for and against further excavation.
Using Multi-spectral imaging, a new technique that was developed in the early 1990s it is possible to read the burned papyruses. With Multi-spectral imaging, many pictures of the illegible papyruses are taken using different filters in the infrared or in the ultraviolet range, finely tuned to capture certain wavelengths of light. Thus, the optimum spectral portion can be found for distinguishing ink from paper on the blackened papyrus surface. Non-destructive CT scans will, it is hoped, provide breakthroughs in reading the fragile unopened scrolls without destroying them in the process.
The original J. Paul Getty Museum at Malibu, California is a supposed replication of the Villa of the Papyri. With the move of the Museum to the Getty Center, the "Getty Villa" as it is now called, was closed for renovations. It reopened on January 28, 2006.
