Scientists have deciphered Greek letters from a Herculaneum scroll that was burned by the explosion of Vesuvius 2,000 years ago.
The BBC reports that the document, which looks like a lump of charcoal, was charred by the volcanic eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD and is too fragile to ever be physically opened.
Scientists have now utilized a blend of X-ray imaging and artificial intelligence to virtually unravel the scroll, revealing rows and columns of text. While further work is required to fully decipher its contents, the research team considers the results highly promising.
“We’re confident we will be able to read pretty much the whole scroll in its entirety, and it’s the first time we’ve really been able to say that with high confidence,” said Stephen Parsons, project lead for the Vesuvius Challenge, an international competition attempting to unlock the Herculaneum scrolls.
First glimpse inside burnt scroll after 2,000 years https://t.co/gAiBjOUenp
— Un1v3rs0 Z3r0 (@Un1v3rs0Z3r0) February 5, 2025
Herculaneum scroll delves into Greek Epicurean philosophy
Some letters are already clearly visible in the ancient text and the team believes it’s a work of philosophy.
In the library of a Roman villa in Herculaneum (Heraklion in Greek), there were hundreds of papyrus scrolls. However, they turned to ashes when the town faced a powerful blast of heat, ash and pumice during the destructive event, which also devastated nearby Pompeii.
Last year, with the help of AI, a team of tech-savvy students successfully deciphered over 2,000 Greek letters, about 5 percent, from another ancient scroll in Herculaneum.
Its subject was Greek Epicurean philosophy, which teaches that fulfillment can be found through the pleasure of everyday things.
The new scroll is likely to be on the same subject—but the Vesuvius team is calling for more human and computing ingenuity to see if this is the case.
During excavations in the 18th century over 1,000 scrolls, either completely or partially damaged, were found in the mansion. This grand residence was believed to belong to Julius Caesar’s father-in-law.
It's more amazing than that.
These are the scrolls.
They were found charred in the wreckage of Pompeii.
Some scientists ran CT scans of the scrolls and uploaded them.
He then wrote an Ai program that could detect the writing in the scanned files. pic.twitter.com/yP7DFObG8y— Brick Suit (@Brick_Suit) February 4, 2025
However, the black ink on the charred papyri was unreadable, and attempts to open the scrolls led to them disintegrating into pieces.
First Greek word decipered in 2023
A significant advance in deciphering the ancient content emerged through the Vesuvius Challenge, a competition initiated in 2023 by Brent Seales, a computer scientist at the University of Kentucky, along with support from Silicon Valley.
This $1 million challenge encouraged participants to extract text from high-resolution CT scans of a scroll captured at Diamond, the national synchrotron facility in Oxfordshire, UK.
Robert Fowler, emeritus professor of Greek at Bristol University and chair of the Herculaneum Society, expressed his astonishment by saying that this is a total game-changer. There are hundreds of these scrolls waiting to be read.
Back in October 2023, Farritor secured the challenge’s “first letters” prize of $40,000 by identifying the ancient Greek word for “purple” in the scroll, which was “πορφύραc.”
Scrolls That Survived Vesuvius Divulge Their First Word https://t.co/xfdSQO8dwA pic.twitter.com/AFjaaz2QmY
— Arts Hub Project (@artistshub) October 13, 2023
Related: The Haunting Intimacy of the “Ringed Lady” of Herculaneum
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