An unknown number of them were also allegedly burned for heat as they were mistaken for wood logs during early excavations

Actually, quite a few got partially destroyed while humans tried to physically unroll them.<p>I suppose they must have left the worse one to hope and to us

I love the human sense (or vision) that we could find these in the 1750s as carbonized logs and know that we should keep and protect them - that we miiiiight be able to read them someday.

I wonder how many many &quot;experts&quot; fell into the trap of calling the reading of those scrolls &quot;impossible&quot; through the years? (&quot;When a distinguished but elderly scientist states [...] that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong&quot;)

&quot;Sufficiently advanced technology&quot; indeed<p>(<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Clarke%27s_three_laws" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Clarke%27s_three_laws</a>)

It’s amazing that they can reconstruct any text at all from those scrolls.

Writing seen in PHerc. 306B, for the first time in 2000 years (scrollprize.substack.com)