Herculaneum’s Villa of the Papyri

The Villa of the Papyri is the name given to a private house that was uncovered in the ancient Roman town of Herculaneum. This town, along with nearby city of Pompeii, is perhaps best remembered for its destruction during the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD. Because of this natural disaster, most, if not all of the buildings were preserved under a thick (up to 22 meters) layer of volcanic ash.

One of these buildings was the Villa of the Papyri, named as such due to the discovery of a library in the house that contained about 1800 scrolls of papyri (known today as the ‘Herculaneum Papyri’), which were carbonised, and so preserved in the eruption of Vesuvius.

Historians believe the Villa of the Papyri belonged to Lucius Calpurnius Piso Caesoninus, Julius Caesar’s father-in-law. This villa is in the northwestern part of Herculaneum, and built in terraces down to the sea, the villa was a grand structure, covering an area of 30,000 square feet. The front of the villa stretched for more than 820 feet, and offered its inhabitants a wonderful view of the Bay of Naples. The villa included a swimming pool, gardens, and living quarters.

It was only during the 18th century that the villa and its contents were ready to see daylight again. In 1709, the town of Herculaneum was rediscovered by workmen digging a well, and accidentally stumbling upon the upper level of the town’s theatre. Excavations continued for the next few decades and in 1750 the Villa of the Papyri was uncovered by Karl Weber, a Swiss architect and engineer.

Two years later, in October 1752, the villa’s library was discovered, and with it, the first cache of scrolls were brought to light. Containing about 1800 scrolls, the collection of this library is quite small, but it is the only known library to ave survived from the ancient times. This makes the library of very great importance to both archaeologists and classicists.

Exposure to the volcanic heat and ash meant the scrolls were carbonised – they were turned into charred cylindrical lumps, initially being mistaken for lumps of charcoal or logs of burnt wood, and their value was only recognised later. The scrolls carbonisation in the heat of the eruption preserved them, though it made them extremely difficult to unroll, as you can see here.

Most of the scrolls that have been so far read are Epicurean philosophical texts written by Philodemus—prose and poetry that had been lost to modern scholars until the library was found. Epicurus was a Greek philosopher who developed a school of thought in the third century B.C. that promoted pleasure as the main goal of life, but in the form of living modestly, foregoing fear of the afterlife and learning about the natural world. Born in the first century B.C. in what is now Jordan, Philodemus studied in Athens and became both a teacher and interpreter of the philosopher’s ideas.

A short video on the eruption, and the AI assisted unravelling of the scrolls can be seen here