Entire Herculaneum Scroll Deciphered by A.I. for the First Time
In June, researchers associated with the University of Kentucky’s Vesuvius Challenge used A.I. and advanced scanning to decipher an entire carbonized Herculaneum papyrus scroll—PHerc. 1667—without physically unrolling it. The scroll comes from the Villa of the Papyri at Herculaneum (identified by historians as likely belonging to Roman senator Lucius Calpurnius Piso Caesoninus), which contains about 1,800 fragile scrolls and is described as the only surviving Greco-Roman library. The Vesuvius Challenge has offered major prizes since 2023, including $40,000 awarded in October 2023 for decoding the first word and a $700,000 grand prize later awarded for reading passages from a single scroll. Using phase-contrast X-ray microtomography at synchrotron facilities in France and the U.K., the team read PHerc. 1667’s 22 columns in full, identifying a philosophical treatise on ethics that mentions Aristocreon, linked to the Stoic Chrysippus, and dates the text to the second or third century B.C.E.; prior unrolling attempts between the 1800s and 1980s damaged the scroll’s outer layers.
From This Briefing
This story was covered in AI Unearths Secrets, Museums Face Reckoning