A superteam of three university students has made a groundbreaking discovery, revealing passages from a badly damaged 2,000-year-old scroll using artificial intelligence (AI). Youssef Nader, Luke Farritor, and Julian Schilliger managed to virtually unfurl and read 15 panels of a Herculaneum papyrus that was badly burned after the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. The digital deciphering of the scroll, part of an ancient library in Naples, Italy, earned the trio a grand prize of $700,000 in the Vesuvius Challenge, a competition aimed at revealing the secrets of the ancient texts.
The team, led by Freie Universität Berlin PhD student Nader, utilized 3D scan data and developed machine learning algorithms to digitally piece together and read the delicate and charred text. Computer science major Farritor and robotics student Schilliger focused on segmentation, while Nader developed the ink detection model. Through their efforts, they managed to unveil 11 columns of text, containing over 2,000 characters of ancient writing.
Nader revealed the key to their success, explaining that the team treated the 3D scans as a sequence of 2D images and utilized three AI architectures to analyze the variation in the shape of the sequences. This allowed them to efficiently learn the structure of the ink on the scroll. The judges of the Vesuvius Challenge hailed their work as unparalleled.
This victory is not the first for any of the teammates. Farritor, who last year became the first person to read an entire word from inside the scroll, won the First Letters prize. Nader clinched second place for the same prize, achieving even greater clarity in reading the word. Schilliger, on the other hand, secured three Segmentation Tooling prizes.
According to Nader, the task was both exhausting and rewarding. He delighted in noticing ink deposits and variations in the thickness of certain letters, which provided insights into the ancient scribe’s process. The scrolls are believed to have been written by Epicurean philosopher Philodemus, offering an intriguing glimpse into ancient life, including reflections on food, music, and enjoying life’s pleasures.
While this breakthrough is indeed significant, there is still much more to uncover. Roughly 95 percent of these particular scrolls and over 800 surviving documents remain to be read. The Vesuvius Challenge will continue, awarding $100,000 in 2024 to anyone who can decipher 90 percent of each of their four scrolls.
Now, a separate team of papyrologists has begun the task of transcribing the passages revealed by Nader and his team. Their findings suggest that Philodemus, who inhabited the library at the time of the eruption, authored the scrolls. The philosopher’s writings offer a unique window into ancient wisdom, including advice on savoring the pleasures of life. The scrolls even contain snarky comments targeting unnamed ideological adversaries.
The remarkable achievement of these young students demonstrates not only the power of AI and machine learning in unlocking ancient secrets but also the importance of collaboration and perseverance. As the pursuit of deciphering these timeworn texts continues, we eagerly await further insights into the past and the lost knowledge of our ancestors.
