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WonderArchaeology fact

Hundreds of papyrus scrolls from a Roman villa at Herculaneum, carbonised by Vesuvius in AD 79, are too fragile to unroll. Researchers now scan them with X-rays and use AI to find the ink, reading the text without opening them.

Vesuvius Challenge, 2023–2026

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The scrolls come from the Villa of the Papyri, found in the 1750s, the only large library known to survive from the Roman world. Early attempts to unroll them destroyed many. Brent Seales's team at the University of Kentucky found a way to unroll a scanned scroll in software, and machine learning, a kind of AI that learns from examples, was trained to spot the faint texture of carbon ink on the charred papyrus. In 2023 a prize contest, the Vesuvius Challenge, recovered its first word, the Greek for 'purple'. On 25 June 2026 the project announced that a whole scroll, PHerc. 1667, had been read end to end: a Stoic treatise on ethics, probably from the 2nd century BC. Hundreds more remain sealed.

Türkçe oku
Herkulaneum'daki bir Roma villasında bulunan yüzlerce papirüs tomarı, MS 79'da Vezüv'ün püskürmesiyle kömürleşti ve açılamayacak kadar kırılgan. Araştırmacılar artık bu tomarları röntgenle tarıyor, mürekkebi yapay zekâ yardımıyla seçerek metni hiç açmadan okuyor.
Vesuvius Challenge, 2023–2026

Tomarlar, 1750'lerde bulunan Papirüsler Villası'ndan geliyor; burası Roma dünyasından bugüne kalmış bilinen tek büyük kütüphane. İlk dönemlerde tomarları açma girişimleri birçoğunu yok etti. Kentucky Üniversitesi'nden Brent Seales'in ekibi, taranan bir tomarı bilgisayarda sanal olarak açmanın yolunu buldu. Örneklerden öğrenen bir yapay zekâ türü olan makine öğrenmesi de kömürleşmiş papirüs üzerindeki karbon mürekkebin belli belirsiz dokusunu seçecek biçimde eğitildi. 2023'te Vesuvius Challenge adlı ödüllü yarışmada ilk sözcük okundu: Yunanca “mor” anlamına gelen porphyras. 25 Haziran 2026'da ise PHerc. 1667 adlı tomarın baştan sona okunduğu duyuruldu. Metin, büyük olasılıkla MÖ 2. yüzyıldan kalma, ahlak üzerine Stoacı bir inceleme. Yüzlercesi hâlâ açılmayı bekliyor.

Sources and further reading

Background reading: Herculaneum papyri
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