At one o'clock on the morning of August 25, 79AD, a blast of burning gas and a wave of molten mud engulfed Herculaneum, preserving the only Ancient Roman library that has ever been found.

Now, archaeologists are finally hoping to excavate tens of thousands of scrolls, which may include lost works by Aristotle, Sophocles and Catullus. Excavation work has restarted on the famous Villa dei Papyri after an eight-year gap.

"It is impossible, absolutely impossible, to excavate this villa without finding fantastic things," said Andrew Wallace-Hadrill, the director of the Herculaneum Conservation Project. "We may find the lost scrolls of Aristotle, or we may find something even more exciting that we had not even thought of yet."