Many scholars believe that the mud-filled lower terraces could hide a fabled second library, which probably contains lost plays by Sophocles, Euripides and Aeschylus, lost dialogues of Aristotle and Livy's History of Rome, of which more than 100 of the original 142 books are missing.

Whether the villa will be excavated or not, U.S. researchers have already succeed in producing a technology that could turn the recovered 1,800 carbonized scrolls into the most significant rediscovery of classical literature since the Renaissance.

Thanks to the work of the late professor Marcello Gigante of the University of Naples, we know that most papyri consist largely of the works of the Greek Epicurean philosopher Philodemus, who lived at Piso's villa and enjoyed his patronage

But many of the scrolls, now kept at the National Library in Naples, have yet to be unrolled or read.

Getting words out of those sticks of charcoal seemed an impossible task until scientists at Brigham Young University (BYU), in Utah, devised a revolutionary new multi-spectral imaging technology.