Y. duo decoding ancient writing

PROVO — Europe's most ancient manuscript is more legible now than at any time since it was burned and buried more than 2,300 years ago, thanks to the work of two Brigham Young University researchers.

In April, Roger T. Macfarlane and Gene A. Ware visited Greece for two weeks of intense efforts to recover hidden writing on the Derveni papyrus, a scroll dating to around the reign of Philip II of Macedonia, father of Alexander the Great.

"We're anticipating 10 to 20 percent increased legibility," said Macfarlane, an associate professor of classics in the BYU department of humanities, classics and comparative literature.

The ancient manuscript, a philosophical study of a poem, had been partially transcribed. But the multispectral imaging technique perfected by the BYU experts allowed a more accurate and complete transcription.

Besides bringing out letters that were invisible because of staining, charring or other damage, the duo corrected previous mistakes in transcriptions and reordered fragments of the scroll.

The technique is akin to NASA's remote sensing, in which satellites photograph Earth through different filters to tease out information about plant growth or weather patterns.

"We're doing remote sensing, too," said Ware, professor emeritus in the BYU department of engineering and an adjunct professor in the anthropology department. The difference is that instead of aiming from many miles up in space, they are photographing a close-up target.

The scroll's discovery dates to 1962, when workers building a roadway stumbled across a chain of ancient tombs in the vicinity of Thessaloniki, the second-largest city in Greece.

It was at one of these tombs, believed to be that of a member of the nobility buried around the fourth century B.C., that archaeologists found remains of a partially burned papyrus scroll. The bits of paper were on top of the slabs over the tomb's vault, where debris from the deceased's funeral pyre was swept. A mound 15 to 25 feet high had been built over the slabs.

Besides the fact that the papyrus paper burned away at the top, it was carbonized throughout. Lying on top of the tomb, with many feet of dirt heaped over it, through the centuries it was stained and broken into hundreds of fragments.

"It's a witness to the amount of care of the excavators that they were able to find this thing," Macfarlane said.