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Greek writing inside a 2,000-year-old scroll burned during the 79 CE eruption of Mount Vesuvius has been deciphered by a team of student researchers. This latest development may lead not only to the discovery of a previously illegible text, but also pave the way for new applications of artificial intelligence to the archaeological field. The scroll hails from the luxury Roman villa Herculaneum and is one of more than 1,800 intact papyri turned carbonized ash, known as the Herculaneum scrolls, excavated in the 18th century. The scrolls that have previously been read relate to the Athenian philosophy of Epicurus who...

The famous Herculaneum scroll, charred papyrus found buried by the Mount Vesuvius eruption in 79AD, has been deciphered by artificial intelligence.The feat was achieved by students in the Vesuvius challenge, which used algorithms to scan the artifact that would otherwise had been destroyed if unraveled by human hands.The winning team read more than 2,000 'never-before-seen' texts that discussed sources of pleasure, such as music, the taste of capers and the color purple.The three students, from Egypt, Switzerland and the US, share a $700,000 grand prize for uncovering hundreds of words across more than 15 columns of text, corresponding to around...

Researchers used artificial intelligence to extract the first word from one of the first texts in a charred scroll from the ancient Roman city of Herculaneum, which has been unreadable since a volcanic eruption in AD 79 — the same one that buried nearby Pompeii...The Vesuvius Challenge, a contest with $1,000,000 (£821K) in prizes for those who can use modern technology to decipher the words of these scrolls, has awarded a 21-year-old undergraduate student at the University of Nebraska $40,000 (£32.8K) for being the first to read a word from one of the ancient Herculaneum scrolls.Luke Farritor, who is at...

A pair of 2,000-year-old Roman scrolls believed to have belonged to the family of Julius Caesar, and were buried and charred during Vesuvius’ eruption, have been virtually “unwrapped” for the first time ever. The scrolls, known as the Herculaneum Scrolls, are too fragile to be handled by hand, so researchers needed to use the X-ray beam at Diamond Light Source, as well as a “virtual unwrapping” software to detect the carbon ink on them. “Texts from the ancient world are rare and precious, and they simply cannot be revealed through any other known process,” University of Kentucky professor Brent Seales,...