How the future is unlocking our past: the role of AI and physics in decoding ancient texts

Researchers are using particle accelerators and AI technology to decipher the contents of the Herculaneum scrolls, making it possible to discover texts which have been preserved for over 2,000 years in the volcanic ash of Mount Vesuvius.

The new technology, called a synchrotron, is a particle accelerator that accelerates electrons enough to produce powerful beams travelling at near the speed of light; these beams produce X-rays which can image the inside of the scroll. These scans create a 3D reconstruction of the papyri layers in the scroll.

AI is used to detect the ink in these layers, which is painted on digitally to reveal the text in the scroll. Theoretical physicist Giorgio Angelotti originally used the particle accelerator and X-ray beams to decipher and decode the millennia-old secrets contained within the scrolls.

Discovered near Angelotti’s home city of Naples, Italy, in the 1750s, the scrolls come from the library of a partly excavated, first-century BC villa in Herculaneum, which used to be a holiday town for the Romans

According to New Scientist, the villa which housed the scrolls is thought to have been owned by Roman senator Lucius Calpurnius Piso Caesoninus – none other than Julius Caesar’s father-in-law. Hundreds of carbonised scrolls had been discovered in Herculaneum, a Roman town that had been buried in volcanic ash for 2,000 years.

The Vesuvius Challenge, a global initiative that was launched in 2023 to discover the contents of the Herculaneum Scrolls, encourages contributions from researchers across the world. Having been preserved and carbonised by the infamous eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD, the scrolls are fragile and can be deciphered without physical intervention using these modern technologies.

We’re confident we will be able to read pretty much the whole scroll in its entirety

Stephen Parsons

Since the scroll was scanned at the Diamond Light Source in Harwell in July 2024, the UK’s national synchrotron science facility, the Vesuvius Challenge team have worked with AI to piece together the images and enhance the clarity of the text.

Adrian Mancuso, the Director of Physical Sciences at Diamond, said that the beams can “see things on the scale of a few thousandths of a millimetre.” Their particle accelerator is being used with AI and X-ray imaging, making it possible to read scrolls which have not been opened for millennia.

A burnt scroll from the Herculaneum library has been ‘unwrapped’, though charred by the eruption and too fragile to be opened. The X-ray imaging and AI reveal the text that was previously impossible to discover, though its contents require further research to be deciphered.

The project lead Stephen Parsons told the BBC: “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.”

The Vesuvius Challenge team last year managed to read 5% of another Herculaneum scroll, on Epicurean philosophy. Of the unopened excavated scrolls, many have been read using computer visions and machine learning, one scroll revealing complete passages of Greek philosophy. Vesuvius Challenge has begun to uncover texts from scrolls that have been closed for millennia.

The Bodleian Library at the University of Oxford holds several untouched scrolls. The head of book conservation, Nicole Gilroy, told the BBC that they’d never been convinced that any methods would’ve been “safe enough or effective enough to get any information from the scrolls” until now.

According to historian Dr. Garrett Ryan, the original method to open the scrolls “involved chopping them in half lengthwise and peeling back layers from the inside.” However, they were eventually entrusted to Antonio Piaggio, a Vatican Library scholar who “devised an ingenious machine to unroll the scrolls using weights on strings.” Piaggio and his machine made it possible to open the preserved scrolls with more care than the brutish methods previously used on the fragile papyri.

Dr. Ryan explains that most of the scrolls appear to have come from the library of an Epicurean philosopher, Philodemus of Gadara, from a century before Mount Vesuvius erupted. Most of the scrolls in the collection are philosophical works, many by Philodemus, that could hold the key to breakthroughs in the understanding of ancient philosophy. They could soon be uncovering entire lost works of Greek philosophy, or texts written by the earliest Christians.

This project is a perfect example of libraries, humanities, and computer science complementing each other’s expertise to understand our common past.

Richard Ovenden

The Bodleian Libraries and Vesuvius Challenge together have already made historic breakthroughs in uncovering the secrets of the ancient Herculaneum scrolls. Of the three kept in the libraries, researchers generated an image of one using AI. According to the University of Oxford news, the virtual image shows a significant amount of the papyrus and columns of text.

They explained that their scholars are using new segmentation methods to refine the images they produce, to improve the clarity of the text and reach the end, the innermost part of the scroll  – we could soon be reading entire philosophical works.

The Vesuvius Challenge invites others with the tech skills to join the competition in deciphering the contents of the Herculaneum scrolls. The new material discovered “could significantly reshape our understanding of contemporary or near-contemporary literature,” said Professor Llewelyn Morgan, chair of the Classics Faculty Board at Oxford.

The machine learning used in this project detects the presence of the ink, rather than deciphering the text – the AI works more like a copyist. Instead, human scholars transcribe the characters, ensuring that no speculations are made and the translation remains accurate.

As Richard Ovenden, Bodley’s Librarian, remarked: “This project is a perfect example of libraries, humanities, and computer science complementing each other’s expertise to understand our common past.”