AI unlocks complete ancient scroll from Vesuvius eruption, revealing lost works by Greek philosophers

Lost books by ancient philosophers recovered from 'unreadable' scrolls

Scrolls from the Roman library of Herculaneum that were carbonised by a volcanic eruption have been read in their entirety for the first time, thanks to scans and AI software Long-lost works of ancient philosophy have been recovered from papyrus scrolls that were scorched by the AD 79 eruption of Mount Vesuvius and thought to be impossible to read. For the first time, researchers have used AI to extract the entire surviving text from super-high-resolution 3D scans of a scroll without unrolling it. The scrolls come from the library of Herculaneum, which was buried along with Pompeii nearly 2000 years ago. Scholars have been trying to read the carbonised scrolls, which resemble lumps of charcoal, since the library was discovered in 1752. Physically unwrapping them risks their destruction and the ink they are written in is mostly indistinguishable from the charred papyri - at least to human eyes. Since 2023, however, the Vesuvius Challenge project has used particle accelerators to scan dozens of scrolls and provided the scans to an online community, who have helped write AI software to digitally unwrap the scrolls and detect ink on them. The approach has made book titles, authors and short passages readable. Now, though, the team has uncovered 1.5 metres of text, written across 22 columns, from a 2-centimetre-wide scroll core whose outer layers were stripped off by scholars through the centuries in an effort to read it. "We find records of several attempts to open it... but they couldn't read anything," says Federica Nicolardi at the University of Naples Federico II in Italy. "There are some fragments surviving from the last attempt to physically open it, but you can really see just a couple of letters. So virtual unwrapping was able to change the history of this papyrus." The scroll is what Vesuvius Challenge co-founder Brent Seales at the University of Kentucky refers to as an "impossible scroll", one of hundreds that survived the assaults of early papyrologists, who could only read the "easier ones". Longer sections of the impossible scrolls are now becoming readable due to a combination of higher-resolution imaging, down to 2 micrometres, and more scan data for training the team's data-hungry AI algorithms, he says. Currently, their AI models are adapted to individual scrolls due to differences in, for example, the inks used. But Seales hopes that when the AI has seen enough of the collection, it will be capable of finding ink on any of them. "That's where we are with large language models," he says. "But that's because they've trained those models repeatedly on the entire internet, and we're not there yet with scrolls." The unwrapped text speaks of ethics, art and human nature, making multiple references to the Stoic doctrine. It is typical of scripts from the 2nd century BC, says Nicolardi, and it mentions the nephew of the Greek Stoic philosopher Chrysippus - making Chrysippus himself "the most natural candidate for authorship", she says. Chrysippus is regarded as one of the architects of Stoicism, but almost all his work was lost to history. According to classicist Thomas Coward at the University of Bristol, UK, we mainly know of it through other, often critical authors. "To have access to a source text rather than quotes and summaries, which can be modified or interpreted by other writers, is very important," he says, likening such a discovery to uncovering lost works by Isaac Newton or Albert Einstein that were only referenced by other scientists. One of Chrysippus's critics was the lesser-known 1st-century Epicurean philosopher Philodemus, whose own works in the Herculaneum library were sponsored by its presumed owner: Julius Caesar's father-in-law, Lucius Calpurnius Piso Caesoninus. Another scroll made readable by the scans has been identified as On Gods, Book 8 by Philodemus, extending his previously known work On Gods, Book 1 to at least an eight-book series. The findings represent extraordinary progress in imaging and the computational methods required for digital unwrapping, says Nicholas Freer at the University of Newcastle, UK, who believes the techniques could "radically transform" our understanding of ancient worlds. "The reason why these developments matter so much is that hundreds of scrolls still remain unopened," he says. "What we're seeing now isn't just a single, spectacular breakthrough. We're witnessing the beginning of what could be a decades-long process of recovery." For Seales, who has pioneered digital unwrapping techniques for decades, the discoveries mark a transition from obsessing about whether the technology works to letting the scrolls do the talking. "What people are going to care about now is: whose name actually appears, how old is the scroll and what does it say about philosophy?" he says. "So we're working ourselves out of a job, but it's all about restoring the lost voices." If he has any regrets, it is that so many scrolls were destroyed before he got a chance to read them. "The ones they pulled from the ground... the original 1752 scrolls, I believe we would be reading them instantly [now] because they were the easiest ones to read," he says.

Complete text of carbonised Herculaneum scroll unlocked for first time

ROME, June 25 (Reuters) - Researchers using artificial intelligence and advanced imaging said on Thursday they had achieved the first complete reading of a closed Herculaneum scroll burnt by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius nearly 2,000 years ago. The breakthrough marks a major step toward deciphering hundreds of ancient manuscripts found at Herculaneum, the Roman town destroyed along with Pompeii in the 79 AD disaster. Looking to speed up the scholarship, the Vesuvius Challenge, which is promoting new technologies to try to understand the carbonised text, said it would place all its data, code and models of the papyri online and offer a $1 million prize to the first person or team to read in full any other scroll. "Just a year ago it would have been crazy for any of us to ⁠believe that there would be a complete scroll read completely non-invasively with hundreds of columns of text," said Brent Seales, professor of computer science at the University of Kentucky and one of the founders of the project. "Today we have shown you that that is possible," he told a conference streamed from Naples. "I believe we're going to read every single one of the scrolls in the collection." UNCOVERED TEXT EXPLORES ETHICS, ARTS AND HUMAN BEHAVIOUR The blackened, fragile scrolls cannot be physically opened without severe damage. Researchers have instead used high-resolution scans and computational techniques to "virtually unwrap" them and detect ink on the papyrus layers. So far, about 45 papyrus scrolls and scroll fragments have been scanned. More than 600 unopened scrolls remain, and large parts of the villa where they were discovered have yet to be excavated, raising the possibility that more could yet be ⁠found. The Vesuvius Challenge has already awarded $1.8 million in prizes for work linked to unmasking the Herculaneum texts, but Nat Friedman, a U.S. technology executive and founding sponsor of the project, said new insight would lead to major advances. "We think it is possible to dramatically improve the algorithms that we have ... and we think that the ink detection techniques that we're using could probably be greatly advanced," he said, encouraging more computing experts to get involved. Among the new material ⁠presented on Thursday were 70 columns of text from "On Vices, Book 1", attributed to the Epicurean philosopher Philodemus. Nearly 1.5 metres (5 ft) of readable text across 20 columns was also recovered from a document dated to 200-300 BC -- the oldest Herculaneum scroll yet unwrapped -- exploring ethics, arts and human behaviour. Federica Nicolardi, lead papyrologist ⁠for the Vesuvius Challenge, said new technologies were transformative. "Even with the most successful methods available ... to physically unwrap the scrolls and read them, one had to damage them. But with virtual unwrapping, we are no longer forced to choose between preserving and reading these extraordinary artefacts. We ⁠can do both," she said. Nicolardi said progress was snowballing, with researchers in the last 24 hours unwrapping the full length of one scroll, producing about 140 columns of new text. Until recently, they were only uncovering about 10% of columns, she added. "Literally last night, in front of Mount Vesuvius, something, or I should say everything, changed," she said. Reporting by Crispian Balmer; Editing by Andrew Heavens Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab

AI helps read papyrus scroll burnt to crisp during Vesuvius eruption

Previously hidden text revealed without unrolling scroll discusses stoic philosophy on ethics, art and human behaviour The surviving part of an ancient scroll that was burnt to a crisp when Mount Vesuvius erupted nearly 2,000 years ago has been virtually unwrapped and read with help from artificial intelligence. Researchers uncovered 20 columns of previously hidden text covering more than a metre of charred papyrus without physically unrolling the scroll. The work discusses stoic philosophy on ethics, art and human behaviour and dates to the second or late-third century BC. The age of the scroll, named PHerc 1667, makes it one of the oldest in a collection of hundreds recovered from the library of a luxury Roman villa in Herculaneum that was blasted by heat and buried under ash in the volcanic eruption that destroyed nearby Pompeii in AD79. The ordeal and historic handling took its toll on the scroll: at some point it was broken in half, while past efforts to unwrap the document caused the outer layers to flake off or disintegrate. What remains is half the size of the original at only 8cm tall and 2cm wide. Dr Federica Nicolardi, a papyrologist at the University of Naples Federico II, said: "We don't have the full scroll, but the surviving object was unwrapped and that's a very important result because it shows that we are able to unwrap these objects completely." The achievement will be announced at a conference in Naples on Thursday and is the latest from the Vesuvius Challenge which launched in 2023 as a global contest to read some of the carbonised scrolls. The project has since handed out hundreds of thousands of dollars in prizes for teams that used artificial intelligence and other software to virtually unwrap the scrolls and read the text from high resolution X-ray images. Much of the Herculaneum library was dominated by Philodemus of Gadara, a Epicurean philosopher and poet in the first century BC. But while the title and author of PHerc 1667 remain unknown, its older age and contents point to another author. Analysis by Nicolardi and her colleagues suggests the text is a stoic treatise, perhaps authored by the Greek philosopher Chrysippus. He was the third head of the stoic school and has other works in the collection. The text refers to his nephew and pupil, Aristocreon. "At first, we were saying this could be an Epicurean talking about stoic doctrine," said Nicolardi. "But then I stopped and said, you know, if this was found outside of Herculaneum, we would categorise it as a stoic work." The Vesuvius Challenge was founded on work by Prof Brent Seales, a computer scientist at the University of Kentucky. He showed how machine-learning algorithms could be trained to read the ink on the hidden layers of the scrolls by spotting subtle differences in the papyrus fibres in X-ray images. The contest, backed by Silicon Valley donors, attracted teams that honed the techniques for virtually unwrapping and reading the scrolls. The newly read text discusses the stoic concept of hormē, or impulse, and warns that failing to regulate behaviour with reason can lead to harmful passions and diversion from one's goals. Another concept is phronēsis or "practical wisdom", the highest virtue a person can have in stoic philosophy. In one passage, the author writes: "We will inquire into something, but we will not grasp it, if in some way we depart from ourselves and from our own nature." The line suggests that reason and the innate human inclination to do good were crucial for furthering one's knowledge. Another virtually unwrapped scroll contained the words "Philodemus, On Gods, Book 8", revealing for the first time that On Gods was a multi-book work. Beforehand, only the first had been identified. "These unopened Herculaneum Scrolls look like dead books, but they're not," said Nicolardi. "They're starting to speak again." Seales said the challenge had now shifted from the techniques needed to read the burned scrolls to the scholarly work to understand them. "People now know that this can be done and now we're exploring what [the texts] actually mean," he said. "For me that's the world cup. I just won the world cup: that's my victory."