AI just helped researchers read a 2,000-year-old Mount Vesuvius scroll that’s too charred to ever be opened — as X-ray images reveal ancient stoic philosophy | Tech Radar

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AI just helped researchers read a 2,000-year-old Mount Vesuvius scroll that’s too charred to ever be opened — as X-ray images reveal ancient stoic philosophy

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The first part of the process is X-raying the scrolls (Image credit: Educe Lab)

The Vesuvius Challenge is decoding scrolls hit by the 79 AD eruption

This is despite the scroll being rolled up and severely burned

Look at the ancient PHerc 1667 scroll, recovered from the ancient Roman town of Herculaneum that was smothered by the Mount Vesuvius eruption of 79 AD, and you'd think there wasn't much chance of finding out what was written on it. It's rolled up, burned and blackened, and impossible to open up without destroying most of it.

However, using the latest AI techniques, researchers from the Vesuvius Challenge project (via The Guardian) have now been able to read 20 columns of sealed-off text, describing the stoic philosophy that was much discussed at the time — and how it relates to ethics, art, and human behavior.

Here's how it works: without needing to open up this scroll and others like it, a combination of X-rays and AI algorithms can be used to recognize subtle differences between papyrus fibers locked away in the charred manuscript. That tells researchers where the ink is.

Further AI processing can identify and fill out fragments of lettering, and suggest possibilities for what might be missing. It's then left to human researchers to read through and interpret what the writing actually means — an approach that has seen multiple successes since the Vesuvius Challenge launched in 2023.

AI and human researches combine forces to decode the texts (Image credit: Vesuvius Challenge)

Experts think that PHerc 1667 may actually date from two or three centuries before Mount Vesuvius erupted, making it an intriguing look into the ancient past. The same cloud of fire and ash that enveloped Herculaneum also (and more famously) covered Pompeii, though the two towns were preserved in quite different ways.

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Researchers working on the project say the scroll is one of many thought to be housed inside a library, and part of a luxury Roman villa. Before now, the scroll has already been broken in half — it now measures just 8 cm (3.15 inches) in length — and part of it has disintegrated from previous attempts to tease it open.

Each new discovery reveals more about the scroll collection as a whole, including how these texts relate to each other and who authored them. An initial analysis suggests this particular scroll may have been written by the Greek philosopher Chrysippus, a prominent member of the stoic school.

"People now know that this can be done and now we're exploring what [the texts] actually mean," one of the research team, computer scientist Professor Brent Seales from the University of Kentucky, told The Guardian. "For me that's the World Cup. I just won the World Cup: that's my victory."

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Dave is a freelance tech journalist who has been writing about gadgets, apps and the web for more than two decades. Based out of Stockport, England, on Tech Radar you'll find him covering news, features and reviews, particularly for phones, tablets and wearables. Working to ensure our breaking news coverage is the best in the business over weekends, David also has bylines at Gizmodo, T3, Pop Sci and a few other places besides, as well as being many years editing the likes of PC Explorer and The Hardware Handbook.

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• Get full access to premium articles, exclusive features and a growing list of member rewards