美国国家公共电台 NPR Ancient Greek Scroll's Hidden Contents Revealed Through Infrared Imaging

 

AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:

More than 200 years ago, scholars preserved the remains¹ of an ancient scroll² by gluing them onto cardboard.

MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:

Now this seemed like such a great idea, Audie, except there was writing on the back of the papyrus³. Whoops⁴.

CORNISH: But wait. As NPR's Merrit Kennedy reports, there's new work showing what's been long concealed⁵.

MERRIT KENNEDY, BYLINE⁶: This scroll came from a library near Mount Vesuvius. And it was caught in the famous eruption⁷ of that volcano nearly 2,000 years ago, the same eruption that buried the city of Pompei. The scroll doesn't look like much now. It's blackened and in tatters. In fact, it looks kind of like what you'd find at the bottom of your barbecue. But the same processes that charred⁸ the scroll also preserved it, according to papyrus scholar Graziano Ranocchia from the Italian National Research Council.

GRAZIANO RANOCCHIA: Unless Vesuvius erupted, they would have never survived.

KENNEDY: The scroll was discovered and painstakingly⁹ unrolled in 1795. To preserve the fragments, the scholars glued them to cardboard.

RANOCCHIA: And it has been impossible to detach them from it it since then.

KENNEDY: this papyrus is unusual because it has writing on the front and back. It's thought to be a rough draft of a history of the academy founded by the philosopher Plato written by another philosopher, Philodemus. The research team used infrared¹⁰ imaging to finally see some of what's concealed on the back. What they found are bits of text that Philodemus wanted to insert into his book, like quotes from other sources he was considering using in the history.

Classicist Kilian Fleischer is putting together a new edition of Philodemus's history using these images. He says their research had an interesting byproduct - it also made it easier to read the front of the scroll.

KILIAN FLEISCHER: It was a bit like Columbus went out to find India but ended up in America.

KENNEDY: They were also able to identify places where the text was misread before. For example, scholars had previously¹¹ read the Greek word for charmed, but the new imaging showed it actually said enslaved. Fleischer says that being able to more clearly see the text can bring new, hard facts to ancient history. Merrit Kennedy, NPR News.

1 remains   

n.剩余物，残留物；遗体，遗迹

参考例句：

• He ate the remains of food hungrily.他狼吞虎咽地吃剩余的食物。
• The remains of the meal were fed to the dog.残羹剩饭喂狗了。

2 scroll   

n.卷轴，纸卷；(石刻上的)漩涡

参考例句：

• As I opened the scroll,a panorama of the Yellow River unfolded.我打开卷轴时，黄河的景象展现在眼前。
• He was presented with a scroll commemorating his achievements.他被授予一幅卷轴，以表彰其所做出的成就。

3 papyrus   

n.古以纸草制成之纸

参考例句：

• The Egyptians wrote on papyrus.埃及人书写用薄草纸。
• Since papyrus dries up and crumble,very few documents of ancient Egypt have survived.因草片会干裂成粉末所以古埃及的文件很少保存下来。

4 whoops   

int.呼喊声

参考例句：

• Whoops! Careful, you almost spilt coffee everywhere. 哎哟！小心点，你差点把咖啡洒得到处都是。
• We were awakened by the whoops of the sick baby. 生病婴儿的喘息声把我们弄醒了。

5 concealed   

a.隐藏的，隐蔽的

参考例句：

• The paintings were concealed beneath a thick layer of plaster. 那些画被隐藏在厚厚的灰泥层下面。
• I think he had a gun concealed about his person. 我认为他当时身上藏有一支枪。

6 byline   

n.署名；v.署名

参考例句：

• His byline was absent as well.他的署名也不见了。
• We wish to thank the author of this article which carries no byline.我们要感谢这篇文章的那位没有署名的作者。

7 eruption   

n.火山爆发；（战争等）爆发；（疾病等）发作

参考例句：

• The temple was destroyed in the violent eruption of 1470 BC.庙宇在公元前1470年猛烈的火山爆发中摧毁了。
• The eruption of a volcano is spontaneous.火山的爆发是自发的。

8 charred   

v.把…烧成炭( char的过去式)；烧焦

参考例句：

• the charred remains of a burnt-out car 被烧焦的轿车残骸
• The intensity of the explosion is recorded on the charred tree trunks. 那些烧焦的树干表明爆炸的强烈。 来自《简明英汉词典》

9 painstakingly   

adv. 费力地 苦心地

参考例句：

• Every aspect of the original has been closely studied and painstakingly reconstructed. 原作的每一细节都经过了仔细研究，费尽苦心才得以重现。
• The cause they contrived so painstakingly also ended in failure. 他们惨淡经营的事业也以失败而告终。

10 infrared   

adj./n.红外线(的)

参考例句：

• Infrared is widely used in industry and medical science.红外线广泛应用于工业和医学科学。
• Infrared radiation has wavelengths longer than those of visible light.红外辐射的波长比可见光的波长长。

11 previously   

adv.以前，先前（地）

参考例句：

• The bicycle tyre blew out at a previously damaged point.自行车胎在以前损坏过的地方又爆开了。
• Let me digress for a moment and explain what had happened previously.让我岔开一会儿，解释原先发生了什么。