Charred scrolls from Herculaneum can't be opened easily, but X-ray scanning can reveal their contents.Credit: UK Photo
Posted on 10/14/2023 9:36:53 AM PDT by SunkenCiv
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 the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, developed a machine-learning algorithm that has detected Greek letters on several lines of the rolled-up papyrus, including πορϕυρας (porphyras), meaning 'purple'. Farritor used subtle, small-scale differences in surface texture to train his neural network and highlight the ink...
The scrolls were discovered in the eighteenth century, when workmen came across the remains of a luxury villa that might have belonged to the family of Julius Caesar's father-in-law...
Most classical texts known today are the result of repeated copying by scribes over centuries. By contrast, the Herculaneum library contains works not known from any other sources, direct from the authors.
(Excerpt) Read more at arkeonews.net ...
Charred scrolls from Herculaneum can't be opened easily, but X-ray scanning can reveal their contents.Credit: UK Photo
The rest of the Villa of the Papyri keyword, sorted:
It says “Trump’s Fault”
For $40K, I’ll read TWO words!
These “arkeonews” links do not seem to work.
My understanding is that there are a huge number of undesciphered clay texts from the middle east that remain undecisphered for lack of scholars.
A couple of ai contests would probably get most of them deciphered. Why? they already have a number of texts deciphered and translated. So it wouldn’t be too tough to train the ai on these texts to read the unread stuff.
I keep hoping they will find some of Claudius’s histories, Carthage, Etruscans. His supposed history of his life, that murderous family. Some of the lost Livy docs. Hoping there was a good library over there in Herculaneum.
They have just started with this stuff. So far it’s they found the word ‘purple’. Gee it could be a while...
That is by far the most constructive thing i’ve heard about in the last month.
Finally!
We’ll get a first-hand description of how Dr. Who saved the last Pompeians...
A machine-learning algorithm, called the Joseph Smith Project ...
Haven’t laughed at that for years...
Never fails...
Fascinating.
If these are the same scrolls I saw in a documentary (— but I think they were from Pompeii — ) they were rolled up, sitting in cubby holes, as they did back then, and flash-burned to a crisp — but no oxygen meant no decaying. Eighteenth- or nineteenth-century scholars tried to unroll them, only to have them crumble like newspaper ashes in their hands. So they put them aside — to await better technology.
Some fragments did get put in a museum, under glass.
The first word was “Epstein,” oh, and we can all guess what the next three were. :>)
Correction:
The first word was “Epstein,” and we can all guess what the next three were. :>)
It reads: pinete ten obaltinen sou
(Sorry, can't do the Greek letters on email).
Right after the word “Purple” the next two sentences are “I never meant to cause you any sorrow. I never meant to cause you any pain.
An entire letter has been recovered. It reads as follows:
Gaius Corpulus to Flatulus Maximus:
Greetings to you and to all in your household. To your wife and children I send my best wishes for health and prosperity. And I do beseech you to remind that mischievous Celtic slave girl to keep our little secret. I am confident you will not endeavor to enquire of her as to its nature.
My thoughts turn often to home and the superb wine pressed from the vineyards on the slopes of Vesuvius. And it is on the subject of Vesuvius that is the occasion for this epistle.
My travels in the East have introduced me to certain men of knowledge, and who claim that the superb soil of a region is sometimes associated with the past wrath of Vulcan displayed in a fury of fire, smoke, and terrible destruction. They further informed that such incidents follow not long on the heels of great shaking of the ground as Vulcan himself hammers his forge closer and closer to those whom have earned his wrath.
You no doubt remember clearly the great shaking that destroyed much of Pompeii just two years before I was called to my first tour of duty in Cappadocia. And so I write to urge that you and your family relocate to Rome or Capua without delay.
Whatever you do — don’t just roll up this letter and stick it on the shelf.
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