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AI works out secrets of ancient scroll - 4th March 2024

Three students have received a $700,000 grand prize for decoding text in an ancient papyrus scroll. The document had been entirely burnt and would break apart if it was unrolled. However, the team used AI (artificial intelligence) to identify ink in the burnt document.

The winners, Youssef Nader, Luke Farritor and Julian Schilliger, recreated five percent of the scroll. It had been written over 2,000 years ago in ancient Greek.

The scroll had burned during the 79 CE volcanic eruption of Mount Vesuvius, which wiped out the cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum. It’s one of 600 that were found in a Herculaneum villa.

The Vesuvius Challenge is a new competition whose goal is to decode scrolls from CT scans of them. The 2023 round promised $1 million in prizes for progress towards this.

AI experts started studying the CT scans which the organisers had provided. Although competitors produced 3D models from these they still couldn’t see the ink.

An important breakthrough came when one competitor discovered a pattern which was left by the ink. Others then trained AI programs to recognise ink in other sections.

Farritor was first to identify a word, ‘porphyras’, which translates as purple. Then, he teamed up with Nader and Schilliger and developed programs which identified 2000 letters – five percent of the whole scroll. The subject of the scroll was the pleasure of music, food and drink.

The next Vesuvius Challenge is to read 90% of four whole scanned scrolls.