The Herculaneum papyri are more than 1,800 papyri found in Herculaneum in the 18th century, carbonized by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79. After various methods of manipulation, a method was found to unroll and to read them.
The papyri, containing a number of Greek philosophical texts, come from a single personal library, that of Philodemus, the Epicurean. Philodemus is identified as the author of 44 rolls.
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Between 1752 and 1754 numerous papyrus rolls were recovered in the Villa of the Papyri, by workmen of the Bourbon royal family.[1] Many of the rolls were destroyed by the workmen, others were destroyed when extracted from the volcanic tuff. It is uncertain how many papyri were originally found. The official list amounts to 1,814 rolls and fragments, of which 1,756 had been discovered by 1855.[2] According to David Diringer more than 340 are almost complete, about 970 are partly decayed and partly decipherable, and more than 500 are merely charred fragments.[3]
Attempts at unrolling were made by H. Davy in 1818, and by F. C. Sickler in 1817–1819. From 1802 to 1806 the Rev. John Hayter unrolled and partly deciphered some 200 papyri.[4]
In the middle of the 20th century only 585 rolls or fragments had been completely unrolled, and 209 unrolled in part. Of the unrolled papyri, about 200 had been deciphered and published, and about 150 deciphered only.[3]
The bulk of the preserved manuscripts are housed in the Naples National Archaeological Museum. In 1806 six rolls were presented to Napoleon Bonaparte. In 1810 eighteen unrolled papyri were given to George IV, four of which he presented to the Bodleian Library; the rest are now mainly in the British Library.[3]
In 1969 the International Center for the Study of the Herculaneum Papyri (Centro Internazionale per lo Studio dei Papiri Ercolanesi – CISPE) was founded on the initiative of Marcello Gigante. The center was founded for two purposes: working toward the resumption of the excavation of the Villa of the Papyri and promoting the renewal of studies of the texts of Herculaneum.[5]
Since 1999 the papyri have been digitized by applying multi-spectral imaging (MSI) techniques and by the use of X-rays. International experts and prominent scholars participated in the project. On 4 June 2011 it was announced that the task of digitizing 1,600 Herculaneum papyri had been completed.[6][7]
Until to the middle of the 18th century the only papyri known were a few survivals from mediaeval times.[8] The scrolls, which were part of a library of Greek and Latin texts from the Ancient era, would never have survived the Mediterranean climate and would have crumbled or been lost.
These papyri, containing a large number of Greek philosophical texts, come from a single personal library, that of Philodemus, the Epicurean. Philodemus is identified as the author of 44 rolls. Large parts of Books XIV, XV, XXV, and XXVIII of the magnum opus of Epicurus, On Nature and works by early followers of Epicurus are also represented among the papyri.[9]