How to read the Herculaneum scrolls
Professor Brent, University of Kentucky, and Professors Berard and Charon, Institut de France, have managed to make a micrometric scan of an entire scroll, its entire surface including the internal folds. Their main objective was to reconstructe the surface, to unrol it but, following the same procedure, by doing various types of scanning it would be possible to directly detect the ink of each single letter, through the chemical traces of the various elements that composed it: carbon, iron, rubber.

At the beginning, you only obtain 3D images of point clouds but, fortunely, they are not arrangements in a random, chaotic way. As you unroll the result of each scan, you can reorder the individual points into rows and columns. Then, by overlaping the results of the various scans, by “joining, adding” the various points and traces, it should be possible to outline the shape of many letters and, with the help of cryptographers and linguists, reconstructe entire words and sentences.

What to look for:

1) Carbon
We know that Roman ink was carbon-based, with certainly different atomic or molecular characteristics from that of incinerated papyrus; the first is made from burned wood, while the same is derived from the "baking" of plant fibers.

2) Iron
It undergone transformation processes which perhaps generated characteristics which are difficult to find in papyrus. Since it is a metal, the use of X-rays or instruments capable of measuring micromagnetic variations could also help.

3) Gum arabic
Perhaps, even the last component could have left specific traces during carbonation.

4) Impurities
Some ink lots may have been contaminated or the basic components have highly specific characteristics (for example, isotopes) that could facilitate the reading of some rolls.

5) "Used" ink
Dr. Stani and Gigli, CERIC Institute, analyzed some "intact" ink found still in the inkwell; maybe, after application on the rolls, some specific characteristics are created, such as oxidation.

6) Papyrus
Perhaps, during carbonization, the papyrus produces specific substances that could give us a negative image of the points where the presence of the ink creates differences, in a similar way to what Professor Mocella, ISASI Institute, and Professor Brun of the ESRF Institute did, who detected the variations in thickness resulting from the application of the ink.