The Vesuvius Challenge is an ongoing project that combines “digital unwrapping” with crowdsourced machine learning to decipher the so-called Herculaneum scrolls, badly charred 2,000-year-old papyri too fragile to be physically unrolled.
As before reported, the ancient Roman resort town of Pompeii wasn’t the only city destroyed in the 79 AD eruption of Mount Vesuvius.
The scrolls stayed buried under volcanic mud until they were excavated in the 1700s from a single room that archaeologists believe held the personal working library of an Epicurean philosopher named Philodemus.
Brent Searles’ lab at the University of Kentucky has been working on deciphering the Herculaneum scrolls for many years.
In 2016, scientists identified letters in two fragments of a scroll that contained lead, suggesting that some of the scrolls might be written in lead-based ink.
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As before reported, the ancient Roman resort town of Pompeii wasn’t the only city destroyed in the 79 AD eruption of Mount Vesuvius.
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The Vesuvius Challenge is an ongoing project that combines “digital unwrapping” with crowdsourced machine learning to decipher the so-called Herculaneum scrolls, badly charred 2,000-year-old papyri too fragile to be physically unrolled. A team of researchers created their own contemporary model papyrus scrolls—charring them just like the originals—to validate a screening method to determine which of the Herculaneum scrolls were written in lead-based ink and hence are the most promising candidates for further analysis.
As before reported, the ancient Roman resort town of Pompeii wasn’t the only city destroyed in the 79 AD eruption of Mount Vesuvius. One palatial home in Herculaneum—believed to have once belonged to a man named Piso—contained hundreds of priceless written scrolls made from papyrus, singed into carbon by volcanic gas.
The scrolls stayed buried under volcanic mud until they were excavated in the 1700s from a single room that archaeologists believe held the personal working library of an Epicurean philosopher named Philodemus. The few opened fragments helped scholars identify various Greek philosophical texts, including On Nature by Epicurus and several by Philodemus himself, as well as a handful of Latin works.
Brent Searles’ lab at the University of Kentucky has been working on deciphering the Herculaneum scrolls for many years. The so-called En Gedi scroll was recovered from the ark of an ancient synagogue destroyed by fire around 600 CE.
In 2016, scientists identified letters in two fragments of a scroll that contained lead, suggesting that some of the scrolls might be written in lead-based ink.
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