Roman scrolls buried under volcanic ash finally deciphered in 2000

Ancient Roman scrolls were read for the first time since they were burned by a volcanic eruption on Mount Vesuvius two thousand years ago, thanks to artificial intelligence and powerful X-ray facilities.

The Papyrus scroll is one of the 1800s rescued from a single room in the ornate villas of the Roman town of Herculaneum in the 1750s, and is now the Italian town of El Corano. They were all carbonated by the heat of the volcanic debris that buried them.

Initially, locals unconsciously burned the scroll as fire, but were preserved when it was discovered to contain text. About 200 were then painstakingly opened and read by laborious mechanical devices. Based on the clock, you will get scrolls in millimeters slowly engraved.

Three of these scrolls were kept at the Bodrian Library at Oxford University, and was talented in 1804 by the future King George IV. At the time, the Wales Rince exchanged kangaroo troops for the Napurites of Ferdinand IV in exchange for scrolls. (The King of Naples had built an elaborate garden and animal collection for his lover.)

One of these three scrolls known as PEREC.172 has been imaged and analyzed using machine learning algorithms. Scanned with a diamond light source in Oxfordshire, there is a very powerful X-ray device known as the Synchrotron, and the resulting data is now available. Vesuvius Challenge – Competition with the $700,000 Grand Prize for interpreting text from scrolls.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5xmdspramo

This method says it is much better than trying to mechanically open the scroll, Peter TossCurator of the Bodrian Library. “The only problem, or risk, is that imaging is so special that it can't be done here. That means the scroll has to leave the facility, and we're very nervous about it. I did,” he says.

Researchers have so far revealed several columns of approximately 26 lines of text in each column. Scholars now want to read the entire scroll, but we can already see the ancient Greek word Διατροπή, meaning “aversion.” Toth suspects it somehow relates to a philosopher EpiclassAs many other scrolls found on the same site have.

Felk. The 172 was the only one of the three scrolls from the Bodleian Library that seemed stable enough to move, only in a specially 3D printed case within another padded box. “The hope is that technology can improve dramatically. [in the future] Items don't have to travel anywhere, but technology can come to us,” says Toth.