Unlocking Ancient Secrets: AI Helps Decipher 2,000-Year-Old Scroll

With the development of artificial intelligence changing the game across industries, scientists finally have a first glimpse into a badly burnt 2,000-year-old Roman scroll.

“We’re confident we will be able to read pretty much the whole scroll in its entirety, and it’s the first time we’ve really been able to say that with high confidence,” says Stephen Parsons, project lead for the Vesuvius Challenge – an international competition attempting to unlock the Herculaneum scrolls.

The document, deriving from the ancient Roman town of Herculaneum and charred by Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD, is too fragile to be opened. Still, using a combination of X-ray imaging and artificial intelligence, scientists are slowly deciphering what lies beneath. Though the work is not over, some letters are already becoming visible and suggest it may be a work of philosophy. This scroll, among several others, was discovered decades ago but left untouched, as it was not believed that any means or techniques were safe to look inside. As more and more advancements in technology and AI are made, we can slowly but surely peer into the lives of those who came before.