Original subtitles

ALICE ROBERTS: 'The eruption of Mount Vesuvius in the year 79...

'..is perhaps the most famous volcanic eruption in history.

'We're all familiar with the amazing things it preserved -

'the architecture and frescoes of Pompeii...

'..beautiful statues...

'..and the remains of many of the people

'who perished that fateful day.

'But the volcanic ash also preserved something seemingly impossible -

'a huge collection of ancient scrolls.'

What we have for the first time ever is an ancient library.

'These scrolls are our only link to so much lost ancient wisdom.

'But ever since they were discovered over two centuries ago,

'most attempts to open and read them have reduced them to dust.'

A lot of damage was done trying to unroll them.

'But that could be about to change.

'For four years, we've had exclusive access to the incredible work

'being undertaken by Professor Brent Seales.

'His work is making headlines across the globe,

'as he believes that he'll be the first person

'in nearly 2,000 years

'to read words inside these ancient scrolls.'

The library basically said, "Hell, no."

They thought you were crazy. I think maybe.

SHE LAUGHS

'We've already had some tantalising glimpses

'of the treasures locked inside this invisible library...'

We haven't got this ancient text anywhere else.

No. It is the only copy.

'..and if Brent succeeds, his work could change history.'

What I'm now seeing

is actually the thing that I've been looking for.

It's incredibly exciting.

'Join me as I uncover the lost scrolls of Vesuvius.'

In the year 79 CE,

Mount Vesuvius, overlooking the Bay Of Naples,

erupted with cataclysmic force.

With the energy of 100,000 atomic bombs...

..wreaking destruction on villages, towns and cities,

killing an estimated 16,000 people.

But that destruction left a time capsule,

most famously at the iconic Roman town of Pompeii,

and here at Herculaneum, just eight miles away,

where the archaeological preservation is astonishing.

'Herculaneum was a much smaller city than Pompeii,

'but it was bursting with beautiful mosaics

'and statues and vast villas.

'The desirable dwellings of influential elites.

'And even though much of it still lies unexcavated,

'what has been unearthed here is far better preserved

'than at its more famous neighbour.'

We have multi-storey buildings,

beautiful painted frescoes, intricate mosaics,

and even wooden furniture.

'Herculaneum gives us an extraordinarily authentic view

'of what everyday life was like in the Roman Empire.

'But in fact,

'the most precious treasures

'to have been uncovered at Herculaneum

'aren't the buildings or the gorgeous statues.

'They're something much more important.

'And almost all of them are kept here

'in the National Library in Naples.'

Look at these.

I think you'd just walk past them in a museum.

They look like lumps of charcoal.

Burned logs, perhaps.

But if you look more closely,

you can see that each one of them is a tightly wound roll of paper.

It's a papyrus scroll,

carbonised at the moment when Mount Vesuvius erupted

nearly 2,000 years ago.

And hundreds of these have been excavated

from one villa at Herculaneum,

representing the only surviving library

from the ancient world.

The library for us is an absolute treasure,

because it may reveal many more secrets

and especially give us many more texts

of which we currently have no idea,

and this is all extremely exciting.

'The scrolls were preserved

'because the heat of Vesuvius, over 400 degrees Celsius,

'transformed them into lumps of charcoal.

'But that same preservation made them extremely brittle,

'and almost every time

'anyone has tried to open them to read inside,

'they've fallen to pieces.

'These scrolls could be a goldmine

'of lost ancient wisdom and knowledge.

'But the secrets locked inside them

'have remained unreadable.'

A lot of damage was done trying to open them, unroll them.

Every new attempt to open these charred scrolls physically

is going to lose letters, words, you know, whole columns.

'One person, though, is trying to change that.

'It's a mission worthy of Indiana Jones,

'but the man attempting to reveal the secrets

'of the lost ancient library isn't an archaeologist.'

My name is Brent Seales.

I'm a professor of computer science at the University of Kentucky.

I want to be able to read what's inside a Herculaneum scroll

without having to open it.

For a computer scientist to end up stumbling

into a world-class archaeological site,

and then to think about reading material from a library,

that was a big leap for me.

'We've been given exclusive access to follow Brent

'on his quest to read the scrolls, and today I'm meeting him

'at the place where the precious scrolls are kept.'

When did you first come here?

I came here two decades ago, first time.

I was completely entranced by the idea

that we might be able to read something

from inside this collection.

'Brent's plan is to scan the scrolls

'and then use artificial intelligence, AI,

'that he has designed, to read them digitally.

'He hopes that a computer will be able to detect ink on the papyrus,

'allowing him to virtually unroll the scrolls without damaging them.'

The goal is to recover something that looks like the original state.

Right. And the original state is that this papyrus

would be unrolled flat on a table, and someone would read it.

And so we want to reverse the damage

and recreate a version of that that is exactly the same,

so that a human can read what's there.

It is mind blowing,

because the original discovery of these scrolls is exciting

cos you've got a library, but then it's intensely frustrating,

because you've got a library where it's locked away.

But with technology,

I mean, how much of this library do you think might be readable?

I tend to be an optimistic person,

and I think we're gonna read everything that's there.

That's what I think.

'I admire Brent's optimism,

'but he's not the first person

'to have attempted this virtually impossible task.

'And this is a project that he's already been working on

'for nearly two decades.

'So, what's keeping him going?'

I'm a pretty tenacious guy.

It's the biggest challenge,

and it also stands to be the biggest impact

that I could ever have.

'Coming up,

'I want to know what could be contained

'inside this lost library.'

I want to find more Aristotle. It would be incredible.

'And we get exclusive access to Brent scanning the scrolls.'

This is the biggest technical challenge in my career.

'For the past four years,

'we've had exclusive access

'to the work of Professor Brent Seales

'as he attempts to be the first person

'in nearly 2,000 years

'to read carbonised papyrus scrolls found at the archaeological site

'of Herculaneum in modern Naples.

'It's a seemingly impossible task,

'but the results could change history.'

We know of many, many works that we do not have.

The Greeks made lists of things,

so anything new is obviously exciting.

'From fragments of scrolls

'that people have managed to open in the past,

'we know that the library contained works of ancient Greek philosophy.

'But with at least 500 scrolls badly charred and still unopened,

'the chances are that this collection

'contains many lost books.'

It's estimated that around 90% of ancient classical literature

has been lost, representing countless plays,

poems, volumes of geography, science, and history.

And every ancient historian is going to have a particular work

that they wish could be recovered.

In some cases, we know what we're missing.

Most of Livy's monumental History Of Rome, for instance.

The vast majority of the plays

of the ancient Greek playwright Euripides,

and an estimated two thirds of Aristotle's works.

But then there must be an enormous amount

that we don't even realise we've lost.

And this huge cache of scrolls from Herculaneum

represents the possibility of unlocking,

of reading ancient knowledge that has lain hidden and unread

for nearly 2,000 years.

'As a biologist,

'I know exactly what I'd love to see revealed

'from inside this library.'

I want to find more Aristotle. It would be incredible.

His science was just so ahead of its time.

His book about how animals were formed,

embryology, basically,

it's just mind blowing when you go back and read that,

and I just wonder what else.

What else was he thinking about?

When you stand here and you look and imagine at what's inside,

you want to use every tool available to try to get in there, right?

'Brent's journey to read the scrolls started two decades ago.

'But he nearly fell at the first hurdle.'

So when you first came to the Library of Naples

and said that you might be able to read these scrolls,

what did they say to you?

I got a letter from the library that... Well, it didn't just say no.

It basically said, "Hell no." Really?

They thought you were crazy. I think maybe.

SHE LAUGHS But you persisted.

I mean, you could have stopped then.

You could have thought, "Well, maybe they're right.

"Maybe, you know, nobody's ever gonna read

"these Herculaneum scrolls." I really needed to convince them

that there was something interesting here that could be done.

'The first step in convincing the rightly cautious curators

'that Brent should be granted access

'was to prove that he could safely transport them

'for the necessary scanning.

'Brent and his team came up with an ingenious solution.'

How do you go about taking one of these,

just incredibly delicate objects, and transporting it?

They are really fragile.

So, the way we came up with a method for transporting

is to make a replica that's the exact shape.

And then the replica allows us to build a case that's form-fitting.

So this is a 3D-printed model,

a proxy of an actual Herculaneum scroll?

That's exactly right. We captured this shape using photogrammetry,

which is a technique that allows us to take images from the outside

and then put that together into a three dimensional reconstruction.

What's the next stage?

Well, we create the inverse shape, which is the case.

The case is form-fitted with the reverse shape,

so that it sits in this little cradle and then is protected

and can be transported safely.

'Brent felt that he had solved the issue

'of how to transport the scrolls without damaging them.

'But the curators of these irreplaceable scrolls

'were yet to be convinced.

'And then in 2019, he finally had a breakthrough.'

'The Institut de France in Paris is one of the only two places

'outside the National Library in Naples

'to house any of the Herculaneum scrolls.

'These ones arrived in France at the start of the 19th century.'

'Over 200 years later,

'the staff here are responsible

'for protecting these precious artefacts.'

'Sharing Brent's desire to unlock the mysteries of these papyri,

'Madame Berard has granted him access to the scrolls in her care.

'She's aware of the risk.'

'Brent has given the Institut de France

'the bespoke protective cases made by his team...

'..ready for the scrolls to be placed inside.'

'With the scrolls safely tucked inside Brent's custom-built cases,

'they're transported 360 miles away from their Paris home...

'..to Oxfordshire, where Brent is waiting,

'ready to attempt the seemingly impossible.

'At Diamond Light Source, the UK's national synchrotron,

'Brent is hoping he's found X-rays powerful enough

'to achieve his goal.'

'This facility can produce very high energy X-rays.'

'Ten billion times brighter, in fact.

'And exposing the Herculaneum scrolls to these powerful X-rays

'could be the crucial first step towards reading what's inside.'

'Brent's theory is that the ink inside the scrolls

'should block more of the X-rays than the paper,

'allowing him to see a contrast between the letters and the pages.

'He's already shown that this can work.

'In 2015, he successfully read a 2,000-year-old carbonised scroll

'found near En Gedi in Israel.'

We were the first to ever have done that.

The scroll from En Gedi was a verifiable copy

of the first two chapters of Leviticus,

and it was verified by scholars outside my group, biblical scholars.

So, fully vetted.

'Reading the En Gedi scroll was a major breakthrough.

'But the Herculaneum papyri

'represent an even greater challenge.'

The scroll from En Gedi

must have had some metal or impurity in the ink

that helped us with the contrast,

because it turned out that the writing came directly from the scan.

What we're finding with Herculaneum

is that we don't get a direct signal at the ink in the scan.

It has to do with the chemistry.

In the ancient world, the inks were mainly based on carbon,

and the papyrus is carbon.

So, it's kind of hard to see the difference

between the background and the foreground.

These came from Paris yesterday on the, uh, on the TGV,

through the tunnel, through the, uh, the English Channel.

'Today, Madame Berard has brought not only unopened scrolls,

'but also loose fragments of papyrus from the Paris collection.

'These will allow Brent to test just how effective his method is.

'Brent has used his expertise as a computer scientist

'to build a deep-learning artificial intelligence program

'to identify where there is ink on the papyrus.

'Because these loose fragments contain ink

'that's visible to the naked human eye,

'they'll allow Brent to check if his AI program actually works.'

What we're doing when we image the fragments

is we're creating a scientific control.

Because in the data we capture,

we can see what that data looks like,

and hopefully tease out what ink actually should be looking like.

Yeah.

Let me, uh... synch it up with the Allen wrench.

So we'll do this.

'Once we use those controls,

'we have a better sense of what to look for in the data.'

So that's where the artificial intelligence comes in.

We've trained a system to be able to see really subtle changes,

to go through the data systematically

and say, "Does that section look like it has ink, yes or no?"

And the training comes from these open fragments,

because by being able to see what's visible,

we can make this comparison

to what's invisible and hidden.

'After scanning the fragments, it's time for the main event -

'scanning the scrolls.'

Of course, there's this sacred kind of feeling that comes over you

when you're in the presence of something that's 2,000 years old.

If we scan the scroll, we can tell what the shape is

and how long it might have been.

'The scrolls were carbonised in their rolled-up state,

'but they were also contorted and bent out of shape

'by the intense heat and the volcanic ash

'that entombed Herculaneum,

'which makes Brent's job of digitally mapping them even harder.'

It's not a perfect cylinder like you envision in your mind

when you think of someone reading a scroll.

They're completely unpredictable in their shape.

Now, they are spiral-like,

but every twist and turn, every break is chaos inside.

'Interpreting the X-rays of the scrolls

'involves capturing their internal structure,

'every fold and crease of the papyrus,

'and then virtually unrolling them.'

ALARM BLARING

'The aim is to build

'an astonishingly high resolution 3D image

'of the inner surface of the scroll.

'Brent's colleague Seth Parker

'is making sure the scanning goes to plan.'

To get a complete scan of the whole scroll,

I think it would take eight hours.

Um, and then that's about 40 individual scans

that we have to piece together.

'These scans will generate enormous volumes of data,

'which Brent and his team must assemble and analyse

'in order to have any hope

'of digitally reconstructing and reading the scrolls.'

'This is the biggest technical challenge in my career.'

I've learned to just embrace the fact

that those challenges make it interesting.

I have confidence that what I'm doing will be a major step forward.

'Coming up...

'from the fragments of broken scrolls

'comes a brand-new discovery.'

We haven't got this ancient text anywhere else. No.

'And we take Brent inside the place where the scrolls were unearthed.'

It's sort of a miracle that they survived.

ALICE ROBERTS: 'One of the things that makes

'the Lost Scrolls of Vesuvius so remarkable

'is that they all belonged to a single library.

'That library was housed in a lavish villa

'on the outskirts of Herculaneum.

'After the building was discovered,

'it became known as the Villa of The Papyri

'after the scrolls inside it.

'2,000 years ago, this villa occupied a stunning 800-foot stretch

'of the best and most sought after real estate...

'..spread across almost five acres,

'looking out across the sea.

'Arranged around pillared courtyards

'and furnished with lavish gardens,

'it was the finest luxury retreat in a part of the world

'bursting with extravagant homes.'

The Bay of Naples was a very fashionable place to be.

Lots of rich elites had villas there.

Later, it's going to become

what's sort of popularly called the playground of the emperors.

The imperial family would have spent a lot of time enjoying the climate

and the beautiful natural products that the place had to offer.

'Even in an area frequented by emperors,

'the Villa of The Papyri dwarfed any other villa in the area,

'and its scale was complemented

'by lavish decoration, striking mosaics

'and vibrant wall paintings.'

It is extraordinary for its collection of sculptures as well.

So there are various different forms of artwork that also survived.

'Although Brent has visited Herculaneum before,

'he's never been inside the ruins of the villa

'where the scrolls he wants to open were found.

'So today, he's going deep underground

'with Professor Mantha Zarmakoupi.

'She's the world's leading expert on the Villa of The Papyri.

'She knows the site better than anyone.'

So, the villa was discovered in the 18th century through tunnels.

You can see a column here.

Another column here.

'Herculaneum was first uncovered accidentally in the 18th century,

'when farmers digging wells began to unearth ancient Roman artefacts.

'Once it became apparent

'that a major settlement could be buried here,

'people began digging tunnels deep into the volcanic rock

'to find out exactly what lay beneath the surface.

'It was dangerous work.'

It was a very difficult operation, so they made as much effort

to create like stability in the space that they were working.

Even the most recent excavations,

the workers were very much concerned about the stability of the area,

and they were not happy to be working in the tunnels.

'Among the buildings discovered was this huge villa.

'Precious artefacts were found throughout it.

'And then the excavators came across a trail of charred papyri.'

When they first found them, they didn't understand

what the value was, what they were.

They thought they were just like wooden sticks or something.

'Some of the papyri were discarded or even burnt as fuel

'before writing was spotted on some fragments that had broken away,

'revealing that they were, in fact, ancient texts.'

The rolls that were found there for a large part were in a room

that the Roman architectural historians called the Tablinum.

It's kind of between two open areas.

'The tablinum was similar to a study or a home office,

'where the owner likely read his books.

'Many of the scrolls were found not sorted neatly on shelves,

'but stacked in piles or packed into crates,

'almost as if somebody had been attempting

'to move them to safety when Vesuvius erupted.

'A trail of scrolls led back to another area where more were found.

'Here, they were more neatly organised.'

This is the room that has been associated

with the library of the villa.

This is where most of the scrolls were found stacked.

It feels like a real rescue, doesn't it?

When you see the context right where it was found.

It's sort of a miracle that they survived and were discovered.

'So, who built this once stunning villa and its incredible library?

'The evidence we have suggests a man of immense wealth and influence,

'a Roman nobleman who brushed shoulders

'with the most powerful people of his day.'

His name was Lucius Calpurnius Piso Caesoninus,

and he was the owner of this wonderful villa

and everything it contained,

including those scrolls.

We have his name on inscriptions found in Herculaneum.

He's the most powerful Roman we know of who was there.

And the richer you were, the larger your villa.

This villa is the biggest villa there.

We put two and two together.

Everyone seems happy enough to believe that it was his.

'Piso was a powerful Roman politician

'and savvy enough to use his influence

'to benefit his family and himself.

'Perhaps his greatest achievement

'was marrying his daughter, Calpurnia,

'to an up-and-coming Roman general.

'His name was Julius Caesar.'

That gave Piso a very, very strong political connection.

To have a son-in-law like Julius Caesar in this period

gave him a certain amount of political influence

and protection as well.

He got to the top in 58BCE and became consul in Rome.

So that's one of the chief political positions.

'A man as wealthy and well-connected as Piso

'would have filled his library with great works

'from across the ancient world,

'from philosophy to plays to history.

'And it's believed that whoever inherited the villa

'after Piso's death continued to add to this collection.

'When the Villa of the Papyri was destroyed by Vesuvius

'in the year 79...

'that library was preserved inside it,

'where it was discovered 250 years ago.'

Over the two-and-a-half centuries

since the Herculaneum scrolls were discovered,

there have been numerous attempts to unroll and read them.

And as you can see here,

with varying levels of success.

Every time someone tries to do this, it results in destruction.

Nobody has attempted a physical unrolling

of any of the Herculaneum scrolls now for 20 years.

But what we can do is go back to these fragments

that have been unrolled and apply modern technology to them.

And there's been an astonishing recent breakthrough.

'Valeria Piano is a researcher in classical philosophy

'at the University of Florence.

'A few years ago, she was studying fragments from

'one particular Herculaneum scroll in the National Library of Naples.

'Valeria was trying to identify the author of the scroll.

'I can't imagine where you'd even begin.'

I'm looking at this, and it just looks so charred.

It seems impossible that you would be able

to actually read anything on this.

What methods do you use to look at that writing?

Cos obviously with the naked eye, we can't see anything.

So digital imaging is transforming our ability

to read these open scrolls as well.

It's bringing together literature and science, archaeology and history

in a really exciting way.

So, tell me about the discovery that you made

with this particular papyrus,

because you had a bit of a breakthrough.

'The Latin scroll Valeria was studying had previously been logged

'as a record of a political speech.

'But poring over the text, Valeria spotted a key phrase

'that convinced her this was something different -

'an important lost book.'

'For Valeria, these few words had momentous significance.

'The Roman philosopher Seneca the Younger, in his own works,

'had used this exact phrase to refer to a history

'of the Roman Civil War

'composed by his father, Seneca the Elder.'

We best know Seneca the Elder as a historian.

He wrote a history of his own time from the time of the Civil Wars.

Certainly, he was also interested in cataloguing the political events

that were taking place in Rome.

So, you'd worked out that this was the history of Seneca the Elder?

This is... I mean, it is mind-blowing, Valeria.

It doesn't exist in any other library.

We haven't got this ancient text anywhere else.

I've got goose bumps. You must have...

I mean, that must have been such an incredible moment

when you realised that it was.

Yeah.

'It's astonishing that Valeria has been able to identify

'this previously lost work from mere scraps of papyrus.

'And her discovery tells us

'there must be many more amazing works hidden

'in the unread scrolls waiting to be found.

'Coming up...

'After four years of following Brent's story,

'we present his results in a global exclusive.'

What I'm now seeing is actually the thing that I've been looking for.

It's incredibly exciting.

'It's been four long, tough years

'since Brent and his team scanned the Herculaneum scroll from Paris.'

Maybe struggle's just part of the story.

Cos if you look at the material,

tell me that the material is not struggling.

I mean, it's been carbonised for 2,000 years

and pulled from the ground 250 years ago.

And now here we are, still struggling

to just sort of redeem it and reconcile it.

I think that's just a major theme in the story.

'Brent's team have spent thousands of working hours

'analysing the data that they gathered from the scans

'at Diamond Light Source.

'Today, they can finally see the results.'

You can see the wraps of the scroll with the core in the middle

spiralling outward.

Of course, it's very complicated.

So here we have one slice. And if you take that slice

and then stack another one on top of it

and just keep doing that,

you can start to get a sense for the 3D structure

that these scrolls have inside.

'The vast amount of data

'has been transformed into these remarkably detailed models,

'each one a perfect digital recreation of the inside

'of a Herculaneum scroll.'

Of course we have this complicated 3D structure.

How do we find the ink in it?

That's the big question.

So what we do is we actually just focus on one portion,

one part of a rap that you can clearly identify,

either in the slice images or in 3D, as we're looking at here.

And once you find that rap, you focus on it and trace its shape

and extract it, and only look at the data relating to that shape.

Each of these coloured lines represent a single layer,

or part of a layer, from the wraps of the scroll

that we've identified and pulled out on its own.

'This process is called segmentation,

'isolating an individual layer deep within the scroll,

'allowing a more detailed analysis of the data.

'Brent's team have been attempting to train an AI algorithm

'to identify any writing inside,

'but has that part of the plan worked?

'Can anything be seen on this segmented layer of the scroll?

'Brent made the bold decision to make his software

'and his data open source,

'meaning that people from all over the world could help him

'to achieve his goal of reading the scrolls.'

There's been a lot of collaboration and sharing, which has been great.

In fact, we've set up a competitive science environment

that has inspired people around the world to contribute to this project.

So, there's a global community now talking about this work.

And by global, I mean thousands of people, not tens or hundreds,

thousands of people talking about this work.

'This is what two decades of work have been leading towards for Brent,

'a moment some said would never come.'

This seems like a moon-shot,

you know, reading a scroll from Herculaneum without opening it.

There were so many things

that I was told we would not be able to do.

We couldn't get access.

We couldn't move anything to a different place.

The technology wouldn't work.

It's been very real that we might not achieve our goals.

Now that I look back on it,

after 20 years' worth of aggregation and accumulation of results,

it actually is kind of astounding to realise that all those people

who said that we couldn't do all those things were wrong.

They were wrong.

What you're seeing behind me is the first ever set of text

from inside a closed Herculaneum scroll.

This is the first time that anyone has seen this text in 2,000 years.

What I'm now seeing is actually the thing that I've been looking for.

It's incredibly exciting.

'But what does it say?

'Brent's friend, Papyrologist James Brusuelas,

'is helping him to identify this lost text.'

The last time a human looked at this was an ancient Roman.

But you're saying there's a word there.

The word "porphyra" or "porphyras" starts to become very clear.

and that's a word for purple.

So you're saying that the first thing

that we pull out of Herculaneum, that we can read, it says purple.

Yeah. It's a very specific word in the ancient world.

When you make purple clothes and you wear purple clothes,

it means you're very wealthy.

It's like driving around in your Ferrari.

This is why the Roman emperors often wore purple.

So in this instance, if it's not matching anything

that we've already seen from what's been published from Herculaneum,

it could be something unknown.

This is from a scroll that's completely closed.

If we can get a little bit farther, we can give you images

that look like something that's already opened.

We're gonna be knocking at your door.

"Can you give me more segments? I want more lines.

"More lines, more lines, more lines."

It's a watershed moment, really.

'I'm blown away by what Brent and his team have done,

'using artificial intelligence to unveil ancient intelligence.

'It's the achievement of a lifetime.'

This is incredible

because you're talking about reading words

which nobody has seen since Vesuvius erupted.

That's correct, yeah.

You've been working on this for 20 years.

Does it feel like a landscape is opening up in front of you?

We've pioneered the technology and we've proven that it can work,

and we've taken a lot of steps to be able to do that.

It's been a long journey.

Brent Seales is giving us all hope.

He's not a classicist by training.

He somehow got caught up with it, and he's our saviour from without.

I mean, he's doing things that we never thought possible.

The plan is to inspire more excavation,

because I believe that there may be more of this material

actually still in the ground.

Can you estimate how many more there are to analyse?

We can estimate how many there are... Yeah.

..but I can tell you exactly how many we intend to scan.

How many? All of them.

And what are we talking about, tens, hundreds?

Hundreds. Hundreds of ancient books?

But they're all part of the collection. Yeah.

So why leave anyone behind? Yeah.

It is astonishing that Brent's research

has brought us to this point

where we can actually read words deep inside these papyri.

Everyone thought those words were lost,

were closed, would never be unlocked.

And just imagine what insights remain

within this library of papyri.

One thing is absolutely for certain,

and that is that this is just the beginning.