The aim of this paper is to illustrate the substantial help that non-destructive methodology can provide in deciphering text and sketches no matter what the writing substrate is. The most important cases in the evolution of non-destructive testing are breefely presented to conclude in how multispectral imaging assisted by image processing helped in extracting the most information during the study of the ancient papyrus of the Daphni tomb. The study of Schliemann copy books and Nikolaos Gysis sketches served as a model to study the papyrus – the oldest ever found in Greece until today bearing Greek text – and four writing tablets, belonging in the findings of Daphni tomb called “the Poet tomb”. The methodology included the application of traditional colour photography (normal and macro mode), classical infrared reflectography and hyperspectral imaging in the range of 420-1000nm under normal and raking light. Selected areas of the objects were examined using false colour infrared imaging. Simple subtraction algorithms and Principal Component Analysis (PCA) were applied in order to extract maximum information.