COURTESY OF VESUVIUS CHALLENGE
In response to the “Vesuvius Challenge” launched in 2023, a team of three college students has won a $700,000 grand prize by unlocking the text of a previously unreadable scroll found in ancient Herculaneum on the Bay of Naples, which was destroyed by the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in 79 CE.
More than 1,000 such scrolls were discovered inside a wealthy Roman villa in the 18th century. But because of the damage they sustained in the eruption, the documents were mostly unreadable; even trying to unroll the brittle, burnt scrolls would have destroyed them. Clues suggested the scrolls contained lost works of philosophy. Some believed they might include unknown historical works or possibly references to early Christianity.
Using advanced digital X-ray scans of the scrolls, the Vesuvius Challenge asked participants to develop machine-learning techniques that could analyze the images for traces of writing, now largely invisible to the naked eye. Remarkably, the winning team was able to identify more than two dozen columns from one text (about 20,000 letters), which papyrologists believe to be part of a philosophical treatise on the Epicurean concept of pleasure, possibly written by Philodemus, the teacher of Virgil.
With the first scroll now deciphered, the Vesuvius Challenge is seeking new investors and competitors to continue the painstaking work of identifying and reading the remaining texts, thereby unlocking one of the most significant ancient libraries ever discovered.
In response to the “Vesuvius Challenge” launched in 2023, a team of three college students has won a $700,000 grand prize by unlocking the text of a previously unreadable scroll found in ancient Herculaneum on the Bay of Naples, which was destroyed by the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in 79 CE. More than 1,000 such scrolls were discovered inside a wealthy Roman villa in the 18th century. But because of the damage they sustained in the eruption, the documents were mostly unreadable; even trying to unroll the brittle, burnt scrolls would have destroyed them. Clues suggested the scrolls contained lost […]
