AI Unlocks 2,000-Year-Old Vesuvius Scrolls, Revealing Ancient Philosophical Texts

Three researchers this week claimed a $700,000 prize for using artificial intelligence to unlock text from a 2,000-year-old scroll that was charred beyond recognition when Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 CE. The scroll is one of roughly 800 Greek manuscripts that were carbonized in the volcanic blast that buried the Roman town of Pompeii. For nearly two millennia, these papyri—now stored in Paris and Naples—have resisted every attempt to read them. They crumble when handled. They are blackened. The ink and the papyrus look, to the human eye, nearly identical.

The Vesuvius Challenge, launched a decade ago by computer scientist Brent Seales and GitHub founder Nat Friedman, offered a million dollars in prize money to anyone who could crack the code. They began by subjecting four scrolls to high-resolution CT scans, creating three-dimensional digital maps of the interior surfaces without ever physically unrolling them. The task was to decipher at least four passages of 140 characters each, with at least 85 percent accuracy. It seemed almost impossible.

The winning team consisted of Youssef Nader, a PhD student in Berlin; Luke Farritor, a student and SpaceX intern from Nebraska; and Julian Schilliger, a Swiss robotics engineer. Working separately and then in concert, they developed machine-learning algorithms trained to distinguish ink from papyrus by recognizing subtle variations in texture and density. Farritor was the first to succeed, identifying a single Greek word—the term for purple—which won him a preliminary prize. Nader followed by decoding several columns of text. Schilliger contributed a tool called Volume Cartographer that enabled precise three-dimensional mapping of the papyrus surfaces. Together, their work has revealed roughly five percent of one scroll.

What they found was a philosophical text, likely written by Epicurean philosopher Philodemus, discussing music, food, and the pursuit of pleasure. In one passage, the author criticizes unnamed ideological opponents—possibly Stoics—for having nothing meaningful to say about enjoyment. The scroll came from a villa believed to have belonged to Julius Caesar's father-in-law, a site that remains largely unexcavated and may contain thousands of additional manuscripts.

The implications are staggering. Scholars estimate that only 3 to 5 percent of ancient Greek texts have survived to the present day. These scrolls represent an entire library preserved by catastrophe—a window into philosophical thought, daily life, and intellectual culture that would otherwise be lost. "Some of these texts could completely rewrite the history of key periods of the ancient world," said Robert Fowler, a classicist and chair of the Herculaneum Society. Federica Nicolardi of the University of Naples called it "the start of a revolution in Herculaneum papyrology and in Greek philosophy in general. It is the only library to come to us from ancient Roman times."

The organizers have already set their sights higher. The next phase of the competition aims to recover 90 percent of all four scanned scrolls by the end of 2024, and to establish the foundation for reading the entire collection of 800. If the technology continues to improve at its current pace, an entire lost library—one that has been sealed in ash for two thousand years—may finally speak again.