In the quest to unearth the secrets of the past, a groundbreaking collaboration between artificial intelligence and scientific expertise is underway. The target? Ancient scrolls carbonized by the infamous eruption of Mt. Vesuvius nearly 2,000 years ago. This innovative endeavor aims to bring to light texts thought lost forever since their discovery in the ruins of a luxurious Roman villa in the 1750s.
The rediscovered scrolls, located in the once-vibrant coastal town of Herculaneum, hold the promise of uncovering new information about Roman intellectual life. During the catastrophic eruption in A.D. 79, these scrolls were tightly rolled and inadvertently preserved, albeit in a fragile and charred condition that traditionally disintegrated when attempts were made to physically unfurl them.
Housed mostly in the National Library of Naples, these scrolls remained largely indecipherable for over 250 years. However, recent advancements in technology have opened new avenues for exploration. In 2023, a group of tech leaders launched the 'Vesuvius Challenge,' a competition incentivizing innovative solutions to decode these scrolls using breakthroughs in machine learning, computer vision, and advanced geometry.
Exciting progress was announced with the successful generation of the first internal image of one of the three scrolls at Oxford University's Bodleian Library. This noteworthy achievement was facilitated by Brent Seales, a computer scientist at the University of Kentucky and a co-founder of the Vesuvius Challenge. He expressed elation at the breakthrough, which reveals unprecedented amounts of recoverable text from a scanned Herculaneum scroll.
The unveiling of this ancient text was made possible through scanning by Diamond Light Source, an advanced lab near Oxford utilizing a synchrotron—a powerful particle accelerator. It produces intense X-rays that enable scientists to image the scrolls non-invasively. The resulting images were processed through AI-driven techniques to enhance visibility of writing, enabling a virtual unrolling of the scrolls via segmentation.
Although still in its infancy, this innovative method has begun to decipher some of the text, highlighting the ancient Greek word for ‘disgust’ among its early successes. Scholars worldwide are encouraged to join the campaign and assist in uncovering more of the text, as the journey to complete these translations is still in its early days.
Peter Toth, the esteemed Cornelia Starks Curator of Greek Collections at the Bodleian Library, shared his optimism for the project's future. “We are beginning a lengthy process,” he stated, emphasizing the need for improved imaging and fully accessible technology to ease further analyses of these scrolls without moving them from their current locations.
Looking ahead, Toth anticipates advancements that will allow this imaging technology to be locally available, potentially sparing other fragile scrolls in Naples from risky relocations. With approximately 1,000 scrolls waiting to be studied, the impact of this collaboration could profoundly extend our understanding of ancient Roman cultures and philosophies.
This initiative elegantly illustrates the potential of combining human intellect with cutting-edge AI, reaffirming the benefits of technological progress in preserving and understanding our history. Such collaborations promise to keep yielding remarkable insights into our past—a testament to the enduring spirit of discovery.