How to unroll a 2000 year-old scroll

[Astronuc]

A slight gust of wind, a particularly humid day, or even a simple exhalation could cause the scroll to crack or crumble into pieces. To unroll a scroll this old is almost unthinkable—but recently, conservators at the Library of Congress found themselves with no other option. They wanted to read the words scrawled inside the Gandhara scroll.

https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/gandhara-scroll-library-of-congress

A remarkable find and a remarkable accomplishment to unroll it in order to read it.

The ancient region of Gandhara is now the Peshawar Valley in northern Afghanistan and Pakistan.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gandhara

 

[Klystron]

Two thousand years ago places us well within the Roman period where inks with iron compounds were often used to inscribe finished scrolls. While too long ago to remember sources, I recollect university projects that attempted to read ancient scrolls as found.

1. Scan unrolled scrolls in layers using electromagnetic radiation.
2. Decipher letters and text from the images.
3. Assign weights and probabilities to the constituents of the deciphered texts.
4. Hand off the results from (1) physics, (2) information science, (3) mathematics to linguists to interpret the contents.

Similar techniques apply to 'reading' printed and handwritten flat pages such as books and folios where the pages have stuck together due to age, moisture and mishandling. The results from unrolled scrolls and fused flat pages can be compared to similar articles that were unrolled or unstuck to improve the transcriptions.

Fascinating to think of future humans preserving and reading our digital media; the difficulties inherent in transcribing the various sources as well as understanding social context such as cultural references.