EXCAVATIONS AT HERCULAENUM may recommence as early as next year. There are high hopes for significant further epigraphic discoveries:

Greek 'treasures' expected from Herculaneum

By Malcolm Moore in Herculaneum (The Telegraph)
Last Updated: 2:37am BST 24/10/2007

At one o'clock on the morning of August 25, 79AD, a blast of burning gas and a wave of molten mud engulfed Herculaneum, preserving the only Ancient Roman library that has ever been found.

Now, archaeologists are finally hoping to excavate tens of thousands of scrolls, which may include lost works by Aristotle, Sophocles and Catullus. Excavation work has restarted on the famous Villa dei Papyri after an eight-year gap.

"It is impossible, absolutely impossible, to excavate this villa without finding fantastic things," said Andrew Wallace-Hadrill, the director of the Herculaneum Conservation Project. "We may find the lost scrolls of Aristotle, or we may find something even more exciting that we had not even thought of yet."

Of the 100 plays written by Sophocles, only seven have ever been found. Euripides also wrote 100 plays, the vast majority of which have been lost.

The enormous villa, which lies just outside Herculaneum, belonged to Lucius Calpurnius Piso, Julius Caesar's father-in-law. Around 1,800 scrolls, of middling importance, have been recovered since the villa was found 250 years ago, but archaeologists have only recently discovered two extra floors to the building.

Work on the site halted in 1999 after a previous excavation because of fears about the conservation of the site. Because the site lies four metres below the waterline, it is constantly flooded. In addition, the previous dig unearthed an unexpected complex of buildings that needed urgent restoration.

Meanwhile, the first work on the main site of Herculaneum for almost 30 years could begin as early as next year, with the aim of unearthing a collection of public records that will reveal the daily life of the city.

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Perhaps the good conspiracy David Meadows thought he detected has born fruit. For additional background see here, here, here, and here. For the eruption of Vesuvius see here. And perhaps The Rule of Four deserves mention as well. You'll know why if you've read it. As usual, I will be keeping my ears open for news of Septuagint manuscripts and copies of the works of Philo of Alexandria and Greek Old Testament Pseudepigrapha. (For a wish list of lost books, many of which however were written after this time, see here, here, and here.) The site is probably too early to contain any fragments of the New Testament or other early Christian works; nascent Christianity was too disreputable in 79 CE for such works to be found in the library of a serious philosopher.

(Via Explorator 10.27.)