A burnt scroll from Herculaneum, a Roman town wiped out by the volcanic eruption of Mount Vesuvius, has been opened for the first time in 2000 years with the use of digital technology.
The completely charred document cannot be physically opened, but scientists have been able to reveal its contents with the use of f X-ray imaging and artificial intelligence.
It isn’t fully legible yet, but researchers are getting there.
“We’re confident we will be able to read pretty much the whole scroll in its entirety, and it’s the first time we’ve really been able to say that with high confidence”, said Stephen Parsons, leader of the Vesuvius Challenge, an international competition for opening the Herculaneum scrolls.
There are hundreds of charred papyrus scrolls from the area – many of which have already crumbled. These have been held at the University of Oxford’s Bodleian Library for decades.
What has been made visible suggests that the scroll in question is a philosophical work, reports the BBC.
It was placed in a special case and taken to Diamond Light Source in Oxfordshire, which holds a synchrotron, a huge machine in which electrons are accelerated to almost the speed of light to produce a powerful X-ray beam that can read the scroll.
The scan is used to create a 3D reconstruction, and then the 10 metres of scroll have to be unrolled digitally, papyrus by papyrus. The AI then proceeds to hunt for ink.
It’s still quite difficult for these to be fully perceived – in 2024, a Vesuvius Challenge team managed to read about 5% of another scroll on Epicurean philosophy.
