In 79 AD, Italy's Mount Vesuvius erupted, burying the ancient cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum under a thick layer of volcanic debris. Nearly 1,700 years later, in 1752, researchers found over 1,800 rolled papyrus scrolls inside the library of a Herculaneum mansion. The scrolls' exterior was severely charred by the intense heat. But due to the lack of oxygen, the interiors remained well-preserved.
Over the last two centuries, researchers have made numerous attempts to unfold these artifacts. They believe the scrolls contain insights about life in ancient times. Some of the scrolls were mechanically unrolled. But the process caused them to crumble into dust.
In 2009, Brent Seales, a computer science professor at the University of Kentucky, devised a way to use X-ray technology to image the scrolls' interior without opening them. The scans revealed letters and even some words. However, the carbon-based ink blended with the charred papyrus, making them difficult to read.
Since then, Seales and his team have been working to creating an artificial intelligence (AI) program to help identify the letters and symbols. They managed to develop the technology. But deciphering hundreds of scrolls was too large a task for them to handle alone.
In March 2023, Seales and his team invited students from around the world to help them decode the ancient scrolls. As part of what they called the "Vesuvius Challenge," they released their AI program along with thousands of 3D X-ray images of two rolled-up scrolls and three papyrus fragments. Cash prizes were offered to those who made notable contributions.
“Faculty and student researchers are great at providing breakthroughs, and we've done that. We've proven that virtual unwrapping and machine-learning ink detection works on the Herculaneum scrolls,” Seales said. “What a competition can do now is amplify and accelerate those breakthroughs — refining them in ways that would take us years to achieve on our own.”
In October 2023, Luke Farritor, a 22-year-old computer science student from the University of Nebraska, decoded the first word from the ancient scrolls. He identified "porphyras," the Greek word for purple. Shortly after, Youssef Nader, a graduate student at Germany's Freie University, found the same word. The two shared the "First Letters Prize" of $50,000, with Farritor receiving $40,000 and Nader $10,000.
The two then teamed up with Swiss student Julian Schillinger to compete for the top prize of $700,000. To win, they needed to decode 85 percent of the characters in four passages, each containing 140 characters. The trio not only accomplished this but also managed to read an additional 15 partial columns of text. In total, they covered about 5 percent of the scroll.
The decoded passages were attributed to a philosopher named Philodemus. In the texts, he pondered whether the abundance of goods, such as food, affects the amount of joy one experiences.
Although pleased with the progress, Seales is far from finished. He is now challenging contestants to decode an entire scroll by the end of 2024. To encourage more participation, a $100,000 cash prize will be given to the first team that can decipher at least 90 percent of all four scrolls.
"This material goes back 2,000 years — there were people who wrote this,” Seales said. “They wrote about love, they wrote about war, they wrote about peace, they argued with each other. These manuscripts are dialogues that they’re having about philosophical views of the world. And so even if we learn nothing but the deep connection that we have to the ancients in terms of humanity, that’s still significant.”
Resources: CNN.com, Cosmomagazine.com, scrollprize.com. newscientist.com
