AI unlocks full text of sealed Herculaneum scroll

Researchers working with the Vesuvius Challenge announced on Wednesday that they have virtually unwrapped and read the full surviving text of PHerc. 1667, a carbonized scroll buried by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in A.D. 79, recovering nearly 1.5 metres of continuous text across approximately 20 columns without physically opening the artifact.esrf+1

The breakthrough, presented at a conference in Naples on June 25, represents the most complete reading yet of a sealed Herculaneum scroll and marks a leap forward from the competition's initial 2024 achievement of deciphering around 2,000 characters from a single scroll.neh+1

A Stoic Voice Emerges From the Ashes

PHerc. 1667, housed in Naples, had been "deemed completely unreadable when part of it was opened in the 1980s," according to Federica Nicolardi, assistant professor in papyrology at the Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II. The scroll's handwriting and internal references suggest it dates from the second century B.C. or possibly the late third century B.C., making it one of the oldest in the collection.esrf

The papyrological team's analysis identifies the text as a philosophical treatise concerned with ethics, arts and human behaviour, likely reflecting Stoic thought. It preserves discussions of ὁρμή (hormē), or impulse — the drive to act common to humans and animals — and φρόνησις (phronēsis), or practical wisdom, the intellectual capacity to choose virtues over vices. While the title and author remain formally unknown, the content and early dating suggest a writer other than Philodemus of Gadara, the Epicurean philosopher whose works have dominated previous Herculaneum discoveries.lifeinthepastlane.substack+1

From Synchrotrons to Scholarship

The reading was made possible through high-resolution micro-CT scanning at major synchrotron facilities including the ESRF in France and Diamond Light Source in the United Kingdom, combined with AI-based virtual unwrapping. Individual scans generated datasets as large as 300 terabytes per scroll — the largest ever produced by the ESRF.esrf

"For nearly two millennia, many of these texts have been physically preserved but intellectually inaccessible," said Brent Seales, Vesuvius Challenge co-founder and the Stanley and Karen Pigman Chair of Heritage Science at the University of Kentucky. "Today — after years of interdisciplinary work combining advanced imaging, artificial intelligence, academic research and an innovation contest — we are finally able to read them."esrf

A Second Discovery

Alongside PHerc. 1667, the team announced the identification of a previously unknown work within PHerc. 139: Philodemus's "On Gods, Book 8," establishing for the first time that the treatise extended well beyond its single previously known volume. More than 600 Herculaneum scrolls remain unopened, and Seales said the focus is now shifting from engineers to classicists and historians. "Now we need experts who can read, edit and understand what they are saying."lifeinthepastlane.substack+1