AI Unlocks Ancient Secrets: Reading Charred Scrolls from Herculaneum

For nearly two millennia, a silent testament to a catastrophic volcanic eruption lay dormant, its secrets locked within the charred embrace of a papyrus scroll. Now, in a groundbreaking achievement, researchers have peered into the heart of this ancient artifact, identifying its author and title without disturbing a single fragile layer. This remarkable feat, a triumph of cutting-edge technology and collaborative scholarship, marks a pivotal moment in our understanding of the classical world.

The scroll in question, designated PHerc. 172, hails from the ill-fated Roman town of Herculaneum. Like its more famous neighbor Pompeii, Herculaneum was consumed by the pyroclastic flows unleashed by Mount Vesuvius in 79 CE. The intense heat carbonized organic materials, including the papyrus scrolls housed in what is now believed to be a vast library known as the Villa of the Papyri. These scrolls, miraculously preserved in their charred state, represent one of the only surviving libraries from antiquity.

However, their delicate condition presented an almost insurmountable obstacle to their study. Traditional methods of unrolling the scrolls, attempted in the past, often resulted in irreparable damage, rendering the texts within permanently lost. For centuries, these invaluable sources of knowledge remained tantalizingly out of reach.

But the tides have turned. Thanks to advancements in high-resolution imaging and the power of machine learning, researchers are now able to virtually "unwrap" these ancient scrolls, revealing their contents without physically disturbing them. The scroll PHerc. 172, one of three Herculaneum scrolls currently residing at Oxford’s Bodleian Libraries, has become the first to yield its secrets to this innovative approach.

The collaborative effort has culminated in the identification of the author and title: On Vices, a treatise penned by the Epicurean philosopher Philodemus. This discovery, confirmed by multiple research teams, has earned the project’s collaborators the prestigious $60,000 First Title Prize from the Vesuvius Challenge, an open-science competition designed to accelerate the decipherment of these ancient texts through the use of artificial intelligence.

Philodemus, a prominent figure in the Epicurean school of philosophy during the first century BCE, explored the nature of virtue and vice in his writings. The full title of the treatise, according to Fine Books Magazine, is On Vices and Their Opposite Virtues and In Whom They Are and About What. The work can be understood as a form of ancient self-help, offering insights into how to live a virtuous life by avoiding the pitfalls of vice. Now, nearly 2,000 years after it was buried by the volcanic eruption, Philodemus’s words are once again being read, offering a direct connection to the intellectual world of the classical era.

The journey to this remarkable discovery has been paved with technological breakthroughs. A crucial turning point occurred in 2015, when scientists used X-ray tomography to read a different ancient scroll, recovered from En-Gedi. This pioneering effort demonstrated the potential of creating a 3D scan that could be virtually "unwrapped," allowing researchers to access the text within without physically damaging the artifact.

Building on this foundation, researchers at the University of Kentucky developed the Volume Cartographer, a sophisticated program that utilizes micro-CT imaging to detect the faint traces of carbon-based ink on the scrolls. This presented a unique challenge, as the ink used in these ancient documents lacks the metallic components commonly found in other writing materials.

To overcome this obstacle, researchers trained a neural network to recognize subtle patterns indicative of ink on the carbonized papyrus. This required sophisticated algorithms capable of distinguishing between the minute variations in density and texture that differentiate ink from the surrounding material. The successful demonstration of this technique in 2019 laid the groundwork for the broader application of AI in deciphering the Herculaneum scrolls.

The Vesuvius Challenge, launched in 2023, represents a bold initiative to crowdsource the decoding of these unopened scrolls. By providing access to the scan data and offering substantial prizes, the challenge has attracted a global community of researchers, data scientists, and enthusiasts. Participants are encouraged to develop and utilize AI tools, particularly convolutional neural networks and transformer models, to identify and reconstruct text within the scrolls.

The challenge has already yielded impressive results. In October 2023, the first word, "purple," was read from an unopened scroll, earning a $40,000 prize. This initial success provided further validation of the technology and fueled the enthusiasm of the participants. The challenge continues, with ongoing prizes offered for deciphering additional text and improving the underlying technology.

Brent Seales, a computer scientist at the University of Kentucky and co-founder of the Vesuvius Challenge, has highlighted the critical role of data preparation in the decipherment process. According to Seales, the team’s current bottleneck lies in cleaning, organizing, and enhancing the scan data to enable researchers to accurately interpret the carbonized ink as text.

Importantly, the digital unwrapping process is not a fully automated one. Human expertise remains essential in guiding the AI and interpreting its results. AI algorithms highlight likely areas of ink on the ancient documents, but scholars must carefully examine these patterns to determine whether they form coherent words or phrases. This iterative process, combining the power of AI with the knowledge and insight of human experts, is crucial for ensuring the accuracy and reliability of the decipherment.

The ultimate goal of this ambitious project extends beyond the recovery of individual texts. Researchers hope to establish a scalable system for digitizing and decoding ancient texts, potentially transforming our understanding of the classical world. The Herculaneum scrolls, with their wealth of philosophical, literary, and historical information, represent an invaluable resource for scholars. Many of these texts are believed to be works by Epicurus or his followers, offering unique insights into the Epicurean school of thought.

By unlocking the secrets of these ancient scrolls, researchers are not only recovering lost knowledge but also developing powerful new tools for exploring the past. The convergence of advanced imaging, machine learning, and collaborative scholarship is opening up exciting new possibilities for understanding the complexities of the ancient world and deepening our appreciation of human history.