Scrolls May Offer Key To an Ancient Library
閱讀卷軸 解古文明之謎
By Nicholas Wade

Researchers have found a key that may unlock the only library of classical antiquity to survive along with its documents, raising at least a possibility of recovering vanished works of ancient Greek and Roman authors such as the lost books of Livy’s history of Rome.
研究人員只有一次在古代圖書館內找到古籍，現已找到揭露箇中堂奧的關鍵，李維《羅馬史》等亡佚的古希臘羅馬時期作品，重見天日的機率因此增加。

The library is that of a villa in Herculaneum, a town that was destroyed in A.D. 79 by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius that obliterated nearby Pompeii. Herculaneum, like Pompeii, was engulfed by mixtures of superhot gases and ash, which preserved the documents in a grand villa that probably belonged to the family of Lucius Calpurnius Piso Caesoninus, the father-in-law of Julius Caesar.
圖書館其實是赫庫蘭尼姆城的一座別墅，該城於西元79年維蘇威火山爆發時，和附近的龐貝城一起覆滅。跟龐貝同遭炙熱的火山氣體及火山灰吞沒的赫庫蘭尼姆，城內一座大別墅有文獻典藏，別墅主人可能是凱撒大帝的岳父凱索尼努斯。

Though the hot gases did not burn the papyrus rolls in the villa’s library, they turned them into cylinders of carbonized plant material. Many attempts have been made to unroll the carbonized scrolls since they were excavated in 1752. But all were highly destructive, and scholars decided to leave the scrolls alone in the hope that better methods would be invented. More than 300 scrolls survive.
別墅圖書館內的古卷雖未遭炙熱的火山氣體燒毀，卻被燒成炭柱。1752年出土至今，研究人員多次試圖打開碳化的古卷，卻都造成嚴重毀損，於是決定不去處理古卷，等找到更好的方式再說。300多份古卷因而倖存。

Researchers led by Vito Mocella, of the Institute for Microelectronics and Microsystems in Naples, Italy, now say they can read letters inside the scrolls without unrolling them. Using a laserlike beam of X-rays from the European Synchrotron in Grenoble, France, they were able to pick up the very slight contrast between the carbonized papyrus fibers and the ancient ink, soot-based and also made of carbon.
義大利那不勒斯「微電子與微系統研究院」的莫切拉領銜的研究團隊現在表示，不用展開古卷便就能讀取卷上文字。法國格勒諾布爾的歐洲同步輻射中心提供類似雷射的X光束，讓研究人員可在燒焦的莎草紙和古墨水之間找出非常細微的相位差，因為碳化的卷軸和墨水成分都是碳。

The contrast has allowed them to recognize individual Greek letters from the interior of the roll, Dr. Mocella’s team reported in the journal Nature Communications. “At least we know there are techniques able to read inside the papyri, finally,” Dr. Mocella said.
莫切拉的研究團隊在《自然通訊》期刊發表論文指出，相位差讓研究人員得以辨識卷軸內個別的希臘文字。莫切拉說：「終於，我們起碼知道有可以閱讀古卷內文字的技術。」

The team’s work is the second recent advance in reading the Herculaneum scrolls. In 2009, Brent Seales of the University of Kentucky succeeded in delineating the physical structure of a Herculaneum scroll by X-ray-computed tomography, similar to a CT scan. The layers of papyrus are highly ruffled and irregular because the hot gases liberated the water from the fibers as well as carbonizing them.
研究團隊的工作是閱讀古卷近年第二次獲得進展。2009年，肯塔基大學教授席爾斯運用類似電腦斷層掃描的X射線斷層成像技術（譯註：X光相位差掃描技術），成功勾畫出赫庫蘭尼姆古卷的物理結構。由於炙熱的火山氣體讓古卷脫水又碳化，古卷皺得厲害且不規則。

The Mocella team’s method visualizes letters free floating inside the scroll, but each letter will need to be assigned to its correct place on Dr. Seales’s surface before the letters can form words.
莫切拉團隊的方法看見字母在古卷內飄浮，但每個字母必須歸到席爾斯研發的表面的正確位置，才能組合成文字。

Classical scholars are particularly interested in the physicists’ progress because of the chance of uncovering lost works of Latin and Greek literature. Piso’s grand villa is thought to have contained a wide-ranging library.
因為亡佚的拉丁和希臘文學作品可能重見天日，古典作品的學者對物理學家的進展特別感興趣。凱撒老丈人的大別墅被視為藏書範圍甚廣。

The library may have had a Latin section. This could contain some of the many lost works of Roman history and literature.
圖書館或許設有拉丁區，許多失傳的古羅馬歷史與文學作品，有些可能會在這裡。

David Sider of New York University said, “For a scholar, it would be wonderful to have a manuscript of Virgil written in his lifetime, because what we have are medieval manuscripts which have suffered many changes at the hands of copyists.”
紐約大學（譯註：古希臘羅馬文學系教授）的賽德說：「就一個學者而言，若能有維吉爾在世時寫的手稿，將是非常美妙，因為我們目前所有的中世紀手稿，幾經謄寫後已有許多出入。」

原文參照：
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/21/science/more-progress-made-toward-learning-contents-of-herculaneum-scrolls.html

2015-02-17聯合報/G5版/UNITED DAILY NEWS 張佑生譯 原文參見紐時週報十版左