In 79 AD, Pompeii and Herculaneum were destroyed by Mount Vesuvius. The library in one of the Roman villas, where hundreds of rolled papyri were kept, did not survive either. The scrolls have become charred and cannot be read.
Artificial intelligence helped read scrolls that burned during the eruption of Vesuvius
During excavations in the 18th century, over a thousand complete or partially preserved scrolls were discovered, which probably belonged to Julius Caesar’s father-in-law. However, the black ink on the charred papyri was illegible, and the scrolls fell to pieces when scientists tried to unfold them.
The breakthrough in reading ancient scrolls came after the Vesuvius Challenge announced in 2023 by a computer scientist from the University of Kentucky, Brent Seales, and sponsors from Silicon Valley. The prize of $700,000 was awarded to a team consisting of Youssef Nader from Germany, Luke Farritor from the USA and Julian Schilliger from Switzerland. Thanks to the technique they used, they managed to read over 2,000. letters from the scroll.
The first carbonized papyrus was rolled out “virtually”. First, the scroll was scanned using computed tomography and then trained to detect the presence of ink.
– It’s a game changer – commented Robert Fowler, professor emeritus of Greek at Bristol University and head of the Herculaneum Society, in an interview with “”.
The contents of the first scroll were read. What is the author writing about?
This is probably Philodemus of Gadara. The style is very coarse, typical of him. The topic itself also suits him
– said Fowler, referring to the words on the charred papyrus, which were deciphered thanks to . The author writes about music, food and enjoying life, and at the end he turns critically to his philosophical opponents. He wrote that they “have nothing to say about pleasure.”
Meanwhile, hundreds more scrolls are waiting to be read. Robert Fowler believes that the same technique can help read papyrus preserved on Egyptian mummies.
Philodemus of Gadara was a Hellenistic Epicurean philosopher who lived in the 1st century BC in what is now Italy. His writings, discovered in Herculaneum, contributed to a better understanding of Epicurean philosophy and its influence on the culture of the time.
Source: Gazeta
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