The scroll offers hints pointing to its likely author being our favorite philosopher in residence: Philodemus. There’s a bit of early evidence that points us in this direction: the letter-forms present in this book suggest it was written sometime in the first century BCE and are of similar shape to handwriting found in other books attributed to him, most of the books found thus far in the library are his, and the word ἀδιάληπτος (‘foolish’) found in this text is characteristic of his writing.There are lots of technical details in this essay. For some background on it, see:
'Incredible moment in history:' Particle accelerator and AI offer first peek inside 2,000-year-old Herculaneum scroll (Patrick Pester).
A 2,000-year-old Herculaneum scroll buried by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius is filled with lost words that scholars can now decipher thanks to AI and a particle accelerator.For many PaleoJudaica posts on the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 CE and its destruction of Pompeii and Herculaneum, and on the efforts to reconstruct and decipher the carbonized library at Herculaneum, start here and follow the links.
For works of the philospher Philodemus already recovered from the Herculanuem library, see the links in this post and also see here and here.
Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.