The researchers over at M.I.T. in Cambridge have come up with a startling new technological scheme to read documents and books that would otherwise remain unknown because they are too fragile to unroll or open.
It is estimated that museums around the world have a total of more than one-hundred thousand documents and books that cannot now be examined, because to touch them would cause them to turn to instant dust.
But a recent M.I.T. press releases claims the school has now developed an imaging system that can penetrate books and scrolls to read whatever might be printed in them, and show them clearly on a screen so they can be read, or probably translated first.
Using a form of radiation known as terahertz, the researchers have successfully read portions of ancient Syrian and Greek documents without disturbing them in the least.
Barmack Heshmet, one of the scientists who initially worked on the project, says that this new technology will revolutionize historians outlook on a large number of ancient civilizations.