Some of our regular readers may remember that we reported on the Vesuvius Challenge last fall, but I bet you didn't expect someone to actually figure out a way to read lava-burned scrolls so quickly!
Ten months ago, we launched the Vesuvius Challenge to solve the ancient problem of the Herculaneum Papyri, a library of scrolls that were flash-fried by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD.
Today we are overjoyed to announce that our crazy project has succeeded. After 2000 years, we can finally read the scrolls.
It only took them 10 months!
You all know the story of Pompeii, of course, wherein the small Italian town was buried by the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in about the year 80 A.D.:
The location of the town has been a global archeological site for centuries. The scrolls in question were discovered in the 1700s. The problem confronting the scientists was simple: The scrolls were so fragile that any attempt to unroll them and read them resulted in their crumbling apart.
Yet last year, an enterprising group of scholars hatched a scheme to finally read the scrolls:
The breakthrough in reading the ancient material came from the $1m Vesuvius Challenge, a contest launched in 2023 by Brent Seales, a computer scientist at the University of Kentucky, and Silicon Valley backers. The competition offered prizes for extracting text from high-resolution CT scans of a scroll taken at Diamond, the UK's national synchrotron facility in Oxfordshire.
It worked! A "team of three computer-savvy students" from Germany, Switzerland and the U.S. won the big $700,000 prize "after reading more than 2,000 Greek letters from the scroll."
And the development was, to put it mildly, a game-changer:
Dr Federica Nicolardi, a papyrologist at the University of Naples Federico II, added: 'This is the start of a revolution in Herculaneum papyrology and in Greek philosophy in general. It is the only library to come to us from ancient Roman times.'
Very cool!
Here's a rendition of how part of the process was achieved:
Here's a bit more technical example:
AND NOW FOR WHAT THE SCROLL SAYS.
Here's the summary from the team:
The general subject of the text is pleasure, which, properly understood, is the highest good in Epicurean philosophy. In these two snippets from two consecutive columns of the scroll, the author is concerned with whether and how the availability of goods, such as food, can affect the pleasure which they provide.
Do things that are available in lesser quantities afford more pleasure than those available in abundance? Our author thinks not: 'as too in the case of food, we do not right away believe things that are scarce to be absolutely more pleasant than those which are abundant.' However, is it easier for us naturally to do without things that are plentiful? 'Such questions will be considered frequently.'
Since this is the end of a scroll, this phrasing may suggest that more is coming in subsequent books of the same work. At the beginning of the first text, a certain Xenophantos is mentioned, perhaps the same man — presumably a musician — also mentioned by Philodemus in his work On Music.
And a primer from University of Michigan Professor Richard Janko on what this all means in context:
Is the author Epicurus' follower, the philosopher and poet Philodemus, the teacher of Vergil? It seems very likely.
Is he writing about the effect of music on the hearer, and comparing it to other pleasures like those of food and drink? Quite probably.
Does this text come from his four-part treatise on music, of which we know Book 4? Quite possibly: the title should soon become available to read.
Is the Xenophantus who is mentioned the celebrated flute-player, or the man famous in antiquity for being unable to control his laughter, or someone else entirely? So many questions! But improvements to the identification of the ink, which can be expected, will soon answer most of them. I can hardly wait.
You also love to hear the casual work ethic of these guys:
We got to do the rest of the scroll. And then another 600 or so.
Well done, fellas. Good science.
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