Ancient Scroll Scorched by Mount Vesuvius Decoded With AI

Researchers just cracked open a 2,000-year-old scroll without actually opening it, thanks to artificial intelligence. Hey, someone used AI in a positive way that enlightens us rather than using it to threaten our livelihoods. How novel.

The scroll, called PHerc. 172, was among hundreds burned when Mount Vesuvius erupted, burying the Roman town of Herculaneum in 79 CE. Traditional methods of unrolling these ancient relics are risky, with even the most delicate hands and cautious techniques causing unintended damage

Instead, scientists at the University of Kentucky developed a method involving high-resolution CT scans and a program called the Volume Cartographer, imaging software that can detect the smallest traces of ink. These high-resolution scans and AI algorithms combine to allow researchers to figuratively and literally unravel the mysteries of these ancient works written in papyrus and ink without damaging them.

Ancient Scroll Scorched by Mount Vesuvius Appears to Be a 2,000-Year-Old Self-Help Book

What they found was On Vices and Their Opposite Virtues and In Whom They Are and About What, written by Philodemus, an Epicurean philosopher, according to Fine Books Magazine.

It’s a treatise on how to live virtuously and avoid vice. It kind of sounds like something a toxic manosphere influencer would yammer on about in a 45-minute YouTube diatribe that’s chopped into 80 different TikToks that turn a perfectly fine young man into a terrorist.  

The breakthrough came courtesy of the Vesuvius Challenge, a crowdsourced contest that challenges participants to use AI tools to decode unopened scrolls. In October 2023, one team won $40,000 for finding the word “purple” in a scroll.

The latest winners nabbed $60K by identifying Philodemus’ moral scalding. The guy could have been a TikTok influencer.