Experts studying antiquity believe they are on the verge of a major breakthrough in better understanding that era after AI successfully deciphered an entire text on a charred scroll buried by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius almost two thousand years ago.

Hundreds of papyrus scrolls from the library of a luxurious Roman villa in Herculaneum were charred when the city was completely destroyed in the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD. Excavations in the 18th century revealed over a thousand scrolls from the villa, believed to have belonged to Julius Caesar's father-in-law, but the black ink is illegible on the charred papyrus, and the scrolls are so fragile that they disintegrate at the slightest attempt to open them.

A breakthrough in the reading of these scrolls came when Brent Seals from the University of Kentucky announced the 'Vesuvius Challenge' -a competition with a prize fund of one million dollars for anyone who could read them.

'We are entering a new era,' stated Brent Seals, who led the efforts to read the scrolls by virtually unrolling the material scanned with computer tomography technology and then training AI algorithms to recognise the presence of ink.

Why does it matter?

The successful use of AI to decipher the charred scrolls from Herculaneum could represent a transformative moment in archaeological research. It not only sheds light on the specific content of these ancient texts but also highlights the potential of AI in overcoming challenges in the study of fragile and deteriorated historical artefacts. This breakthrough has broader implications for the future of archaeological exploration and the integration of cutting-edge technologies in preserving and unravelling our historical heritage.