From invisibility to readability: Recovering the ink of Herculaneum

Clifford Seth Parker; Stephen Parsons; Jack Bandy; Christy Chapman; Frederik Coppens; William Brent Seales

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0215775

From invisibility to readability: Recovering the ink of Herculaneum

Clifford Seth Parker, Stephen Parsons, Jack Bandy, Christy Chapman, Frederik Coppens, William Brent Seales

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

22 Scopus citations

Abstract

The noninvasive digital restoration of ancient texts written in carbon black ink and hidden inside artifacts has proven elusive, even with advanced imaging techniques like x-ray-based micro-computed tomography (micro-CT). This paper identifies a crucial mistaken assumption: that micro-CT data fails to capture any information representing the presence of carbon ink. Instead, we show new experiments indicating a subtle but detectable signature from carbon ink in micro-CT. We demonstrate a new computational approach that captures, enhances, and makes visible the characteristic signature created by carbon ink in micro-CT. This previously “unseen” evidence of carbon inks, which can now successfully be made visible, is a discovery that can lead directly to the noninvasive digital recovery of the lost texts of Herculaneum.

Original language	English
Article number	e0215775
Journal	PLoS ONE
Volume	14
Issue number	5
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0215775
State	Published - May 2019

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2019 Parker et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

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abstract = "The noninvasive digital restoration of ancient texts written in carbon black ink and hidden inside artifacts has proven elusive, even with advanced imaging techniques like x-ray-based micro-computed tomography (micro-CT). This paper identifies a crucial mistaken assumption: that micro-CT data fails to capture any information representing the presence of carbon ink. Instead, we show new experiments indicating a subtle but detectable signature from carbon ink in micro-CT. We demonstrate a new computational approach that captures, enhances, and makes visible the characteristic signature created by carbon ink in micro-CT. This previously “unseen” evidence of carbon inks, which can now successfully be made visible, is a discovery that can lead directly to the noninvasive digital recovery of the lost texts of Herculaneum.",

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From invisibility to readability: Recovering the ink of Herculaneum

Abstract

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