AI helps read papyrus scroll burnt to crisp during Vesuvius eruption | AI (artificial intelligence)

The surviving portion of an ancient scroll that burned to a crisp when Mount Vesuvius erupted nearly 2,000 years ago has been virtually opened and read with the help of artificial intelligence.

Without physically opening the scroll, researchers uncovered 20 columns of previously hidden text covering more than a meter of burnt papyrus. The work discusses stoic philosophy on ethics, art, and human behavior and dates to the late 2nd or 3rd century BC.

The age of the scroll, called PHerc 1667, makes it one of the oldest in a collection of hundreds of artifacts found in the library of a luxurious Roman villa in Herculaneum that were damaged by the heat and buried under ash in the volcanic eruption near Pompeii in AD 79.

The painful and historic process took its toll on the parchment: At one point it split in half, while past efforts to open the document caused the outer layers to flake or crumble. What remains is half the size of the original, only 8 cm high and 2 cm wide.

Papyrologist Dr. from the University of Naples Federico II. Federica Nicolardi said: “We do not have the whole scroll, but the surviving object was unpackaged, and this is a very important result because it shows that we were able to completely open these objects.”

The achievement will be announced at a conference in Naples on Thursday and will be the latest in the Vesuvius Challenge, launched in 2023 as a global competition to read some of the carbonized scrolls. The project has since awarded hundreds of thousands of dollars in prizes to teams using artificial intelligence and other software to virtually open the scrolls and read the text from high-resolution X-ray images.

Much of the Herculaneum library was under the possession of Philodemus of Gadara, an Epicurean philosopher and poet in the 1st century BC. However, although the title and author of PHerc 1667 are unknown, its age and contents point to another author.

Analysis by Nicolardi and his colleagues suggests that the text is a stoic treatise, possibly written by the Greek philosopher Chrysippus. He is the third head of the Stoic school and has other works in the collection. The text mentions his nephew and student Aristocreon.

“At first we were saying this might be an Epicurean talking about Stoic doctrine,” Nicolardi said. “But then I stopped and said that if this were found outside Herculaneum, we would classify it as a stoic work.”

The Vesuvius Challenge was founded on the work of computer scientist Prof Brent Seales from the University of Kentucky. By detecting subtle differences in papyrus fibers in X-ray images, he showed how machine learning algorithms could be trained to read ink in hidden layers of scrolls. The competition, supported by Silicon Valley donors, attracted teams that developed techniques for virtually opening and reading scrolls.

The new reading discusses the stoic concept of hormē, or drive, and warns that failure to regulate behavior through reason can lead to harmful passions and deviation from one’s goals. Another concept is phronēsis or “practical wisdom”, which in stoic philosophy is the highest virtue a person can have.

In one passage the author writes: “We will investigate something, but we will not understand it if we are somehow separated from ourselves and our own nature.” This line suggests that reason and man’s innate tendency to do good are crucial in advancing one’s knowledge.

Another almost unopened scroll contained the words “Philodemus, On the Gods, Book 8,” revealing for the first time that On the Gods was a multi-book work. Only the first has been described previously. “These unopened Herculaneum Scrolls look like dead books, but they are not,” Nicolardi said. “They’re starting to talk again.”

Seales said the challenge is now shifting from the techniques needed to read the burnt scrolls to the scientific work required to understand them. “People now know it can be done and now we are looking into what we can do.” [the texts] “What I really mean,” he said. “For me, this is the World Cup. “I just won the world cup: this is my victory.”