Scientists managed to read texts of papyri charred during the eruption of Vesuvius

In 79 AD, the eruption of Vesuvius buried the Roman cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum under layers of ash and volcanic rock, along with hundreds of papyrus scrolls. While they were completely burned in Pompeii, the collection of scrolls found during the excavation of a villa in Herculaneum was preserved in a charred state. This condition paradoxically saved the papyri from decay but made them incredibly fragile: any touch would turn them into dust.

Since their discovery in 1752, researchers have tried various methods of unrolling the scrolls — from cutting with knives to using mercury and acetic acid. However, most of these attempts ended either in the destruction of the scrolls or their complete illegibility.

Recently, as The Washington Post writes, researchers reported the greatest success in the history of studying these finds. They managed to virtually unroll one of the scrolls and read about 20 columns of text — approximately one and a half meters of continuous writing. In addition, since 2023, scientists have deciphered at least 230 columns of texts from several papyri in total.

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The discovery was made possible by the joint efforts of scientists from the University of Kentucky and the Vesuvius Challenge initiative — an open competition supported by Silicon Valley investors. Instead of physically interacting with the artifacts, researchers used high-precision computed tomography. With the help of a special beam generated by a particle accelerator, they created three-dimensional images of the scrolls with a detail of up to two microns — less than the thickness of a spider web.

The main difficulty was that even in such images, the ink remained invisible to the naked eye. This is where machine learning algorithms came to the rescue, trained to recognize faint traces of ink on charred papyrus, as well as to virtually separate tightly compressed layers of material and "unroll" them into flat pages. After this, specialists in ancient manuscripts analyzed the texts.

Among the most important discoveries is new information about the work of the philosopher Philodemus of Gadara, "On the Gods." Previously, scholars knew only one part of it, but one of the deciphered scrolls mentions that this work had eight chapters. The preserved fragments contain the words "providence," "future things," and "invisible essence," indicating the author's affiliation with the Epicurean philosophical school.

Another partially read scroll, whose author has not yet been identified, contains the terms "horme" (impulse) and "phronesis" (practical wisdom). This suggests that the text discusses ideas of Stoicism — a philosophical school that advocated self-control and rational thinking.

All deciphered papyri belong to a collection of over 400 scrolls from the library of the villa in Herculaneum, which researchers believe may have belonged to Julius Caesar's father-in-law. The library's collection preserved not only works by Philodemus, who likely lived in the villa, but also other valuable texts of antiquity. This is evidenced, for example, by a previously discovered historical work dedicated to events after the death of Alexander the Great.

So far, researchers have scanned only about 10% of the entire collection. The process remains very expensive: scanning one scroll takes 20 to 24 hours, and a week of particle accelerator operation can cost about 250 thousand dollars.

To attract as many researchers as possible to decipher the ancient library, the organizers of the Vesuvius Challenge have made all acquired scans, program code, and other data publicly available. Simultaneously, they announced a one-million-dollar reward for anyone who can fully read one of the scrolls within the next year.

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