Rolled and charred 2,000 years ago. Scientists used artificial intelligence to decode text on papyrus. So AI now looks back as well as forward
Three young scientists have won the grand prize in the Vesuvius Challenge for deciphering passages on a previously unreadable Herculaneum scroll.
More than a thousand scrolls were buried and covered in volcanic debris when Mount Vesuvius erupted about 2,000 years ago. They were in a library at a Roman villa in the ancient city of Herculaneum, and discovered in the 1800s by a local farmer.
Many people have tried to read the scrolls since then, but most attempts have destroyed the ancient papyrus scrolls, which were left rolled, carbonized and fragile, underground, for centuries.
The winners — Youssef Nader, Luke Farritor, Julian Schilliger — overcame this challenge by managing to read four passages without ever unrolling the scrolls.
They used machine learning, a form of artificial intelligence, to read the ancient Greek text. Nadery, Farritor and Schillinger independently contributed to the Vesuvius scrolls community, and now share the grand prize of $700,000 (€650,000).
The object was to decipher four passages of text, each of at least 140 characters, with at least 85% of characters “recoverable” — or readable.
Their work has revealed — what is believed to be — unknown texts by Philodemus, the villa’s so-called philosopher-in-residence.
In the text, Philodemus writes about living a good life through the pleasures of beauty, music and food. Researchers say this and future discoveries in the texts will give them a “unique window into the classical world.”
