AI Is 'Unwrapping' Burnt Scrolls From Herculaneum

The first word found and translated from an unopened carbonized scroll from the Roman town of Herculaneum was announced this week, as part of the $1,000,000 Vesuvius Challenge to read the papyri from the settlement that was buried by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79. The word was purple. It was found first by Luke Farritor, who won $40,000 for his efforts, according to a release on the challenge’s website.

The program is called the Volume Cartographer, and uses micro-CT imaging to produce high-resolution images of the characters inside. Document scanning technologies often detect metals in the ink to discern written lettering from the surface on which it was written. But the Herculaneum ink is carbon-based, so the researchers developed a neural network to identify patterns in the data of the scan that indicated the presence of ink from the unmarked parts of the papyrus.

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