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Thanks to Machine Learning, Scientist Finally Recover Text From The Charred Scrolls of Vesuvius

The great libraries of the ancient classical world are "legendary... said to have contained stacks of texts," writes ScienceAlert. But from Rome to Constantinople, Athens to Alexandria, only one collection survived to the present day. And here in 2024, "we can now start reading its contents." A...

A worldwide competition to decipher the charred texts of the Villa of Papyri — an ancient Roman mansion destroyed by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius — has revealed a timeless infatuation with the pleasures of music, the color purple, and, of course, the zingy taste of capers. The so-called Vesuvius challenge was launched a few years ago by computer scientist Brent Seales at the University of Kentucky with support from Silicon Valley investors. The ongoing ' master plan' is to build on Seales' previous work and read all 1,800 or so charred papyri from the ancient Roman library, starting with scrolls labeled 1 to 4.

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