AI Reads 20 Columns from Burnt Herculaneum Scroll

Researchers used artificial intelligence to read 20 columns of previously hidden text from a carbonised scroll recovered from Herculaneum without physically unrolling it. The scroll, named PHerc 1667, was recovered from the library of a luxury Roman villa near Naples that was blasted by heat and buried under ash in the AD79 eruption of Mount Vesuvius.

The surviving fragment is half the size of the original at 8cm tall and 2cm wide.

The text discusses stoic philosophy on ethics, art and human behaviour and dates to the second or late-third century BC. Analysis suggests the work may be a stoic treatise, possibly authored by the Greek philosopher Chrysippus. The text refers to concepts including hormē, or impulse, and phronēsis, or practical wisdom.

Machine-learning algorithms were trained to detect subtle differences in the papyrus fibres to reveal the ink on hidden layers. The achievement will be announced at a conference in Naples on Thursday. It is the latest result from the Vesuvius Challenge, a global contest launched in 2023 that has awarded hundreds of thousands of dollars in prizes for teams that virtually unwrap and read the scrolls.

A papyrologist at the University of Naples Federico II said the surviving object was unwrapped and that the result shows researchers are able to unwrap these objects completely. Another virtually unwrapped scroll revealed for the first time that a work by Philodemus titled On Gods was a multi-book text.