Multispectral imaging of P.Oxy.

Multispectral imaging
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Gene Ware of Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, visited Oxford in the week of 10 April 2005 to create MSI images, taken at all ranges of the light band, of papyri in Oxford libraries, as part of a project begun in 2002. We scanned portions of the unrolled Herculaneum papyrus in the Bodleian Library and experimented on problematic carbonised and non-carbonised samples in the Oxyrhynchus collection in the Sackler Library, some of them for final checks in texts scheduled for publication in the next two volumes of The Oxyrhynchus Papyri. The results provided many new readings and confirmation of uncertain readings in some problematic areas, none at all in others, depending on settings and surface type. A number of new identifications emerged of literary and documentary texts not previously made by the usual means, together with the isolation of four or five different types of surface and obscurity that respond well or not so well to the BYU process.

Source: Rogue Classicism April 2006.