In 1752 Camillo Paderni, an artist who had been put in charge of the growing pile of antiquities being dug up at Herculaneum, a seaside town near Naples, wrote to a certain Dr Mead, who then wrote to the Royal Society in London reporting that "there were found many volumes of papyrus but turned to a sort of charcoal, and so brittle, that being touched, it fell to ashes. Yet by His Majesty's orders he made many trials to open them, but all to no purpose; excepting some scraps containing some words." The excavation at Herculaneum-which, like nearby Pompeii, was buried in 79AD under ash from Mount Vesuvius-had uncovered a literary time capsule. What came to be called the Villa of the Papyri contained a library of perhaps 2,000 books, the only such collection known to have been preserved from antiquity.
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机译：1752年，卡米洛·帕德尼（Camillo Paderni）负责在那不勒斯附近的海滨小镇赫库兰尼姆挖出越来越多的文物，他写信给了米德博士，后者随后写信给伦敦皇家学会，说：那里发现有很多纸莎草纸，但变成一种木炭，又很脆，被触摸后变成灰烬，但在Ma下的命令下，他进行了许多试验以打开纸莎草，但无济于事；除了一些碎纸屑包含一些单词。”像附近的庞贝城一样，赫库兰尼姆的发掘被发现埋藏在文学史上。所谓的纸莎草别墅（Villa of the Papyri）内藏有大约2,000本书的图书馆，这是已知唯一从古代保存下来的藏书。
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