Greece & Rome · 2nd century BC · Herculaneum, Campania, Italy
Surviving text of charred Herculaneum scroll from Vesuvius eruption read without unrolling
Nearly 1.5 metres of text from PHerc. 1667, a Greek philosophical work of around the 2nd century BC that may be Stoic, were recovered with X-ray scans and AI.
Official announcement
Herculaneum, Italy Researchers with the Vesuvius Challenge have virtually unwrapped and read the whole surviving portion of a carbonised papyrus scroll from Herculaneum. Herculaneum is the Roman town buried by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79. The scroll, known as PHerc. 1667, holds nearly 1.5 metres of Greek text in about 20 columns.
Its handwriting and internal references point to the 2nd century BC, or possibly the late 3rd century BC. That would make it one of the oldest scrolls in the collection.
The results were announced in Naples, at the Biblioteca Nazionale di Napoli Vittorio Emanuele III, where the scroll is kept. The announcement also covered progress on several other scrolls. Archaeology News describes it as the first complete digital reading of a sealed Herculaneum scroll.
PHerc. 1667 belongs to a library of papyri found in the 18th century at a villa at Herculaneum, the Villa of the Papyri. The heat of the eruption turned the rolls into fragile blocks of carbon. Opening them by hand risks destroying them, and more than 600 of them remain unopened.
Damaged by attempts to open it
Records from 1782 describe PHerc. 1667 as compressed but largely intact. Later attempts to open it damaged its structure and reduced its size. It now survives as only part of the original scroll, according to Federica Nicolardi, assistant professor in papyrology at the University of Naples Federico II.
She gives its size as about 8 centimetres tall, less than half the size of a typical Herculaneum roll. It is about 2 centimetres in diameter, less than half its width in 1782.
This scroll was deemed completely unreadable when part of it was opened in the 1980s. While a few isolated letters were visible, overlapping layers obscured the writing, and the scroll was assigned a readability score of zero. But now, with virtual unwrapping, we can follow sustained arguments across multiple columns.
Federica Nicolardi, assistant professor in papyrology, University of Naples Federico II
The team scanned the scroll with high-resolution X-rays at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF) in Grenoble, France. A synchrotron is a particle accelerator. It produces X-rays far more intense than a laboratory machine, which allows much finer imaging.
The researchers rebuilt the rolled layers in three dimensions and flattened them into digital sheets. They trained AI models to detect ink that is almost invisible against the burned papyrus. Papyrologists then checked every reading and produced the Greek text.
The Vesuvius Challenge scans are the largest dataset ESRF has produced. Individual scans reach as much as 300 terabytes per scroll.
Probably a Stoic text, found in an Epicurean library
The title and author are unknown. The papyrologists read the work as a philosophical treatise on ethics, arts and human behaviour. It likely reflects Stoic thought.
The text discusses hormē, or impulse: the drive to act that humans and animals share. The author appears to warn against excessive impulse. The work also deals with phronēsis, practical wisdom. One passage reads: "We will inquire into something, but we will not grasp it, if in some way we depart from ourselves and from our own nature."
The Herculaneum library is almost entirely Epicurean. It is dominated by the works of Philodemus of Gadara. The early date and the contents suggest a writer other than Philodemus.
Team member Alessia Lavorante said: "The Herculaneum collection does include other authors, such as Epicurus himself and other Epicurean authors whose dates fit the proposed chronology." She added that the library also holds books by the Stoic philosopher Chrysippus.
If this text had been found in Egypt or anywhere else, it would probably have been classified straight away as a Stoic text. The fact that it comes from a collection that is almost entirely Epicurean makes us more cautious in drawing conclusions.
Federica Nicolardi, University of Naples Federico II
The final preserved column names Aristocreon. He was the nephew and pupil of Chrysippus, the third head of the Stoic school. Only a small part of Chrysippus's own writings survives.
Nicolardi said that if the text is a Stoic treatise, Chrysippus would be a good candidate for authorship. The mention of Aristocreon might point the same way.
New readings from other scrolls
The team also reported results from other scrolls. In PHerc. 139, papyrologists read an end-title: Philodemus, On Gods, Book 8. Until now only the first book of the work was known (PHerc. 26).
The new title shows the work ran to at least eight books. The team will look for the missing parts among related scrolls.
The team recovered more than 70 columns of text from PHerc. 172 at Oxford's Bodleian Libraries. That scroll was scanned at Diamond Light Source in the UK. The team also lists a further newly identified book by Philodemus, On Vices, Book 1.
A higher-resolution scan of PHerc. Paris 4 showed ink directly in the 3D X-ray data. The ink matched earlier readings.
Brent Seales of the University of Kentucky launched the Vesuvius Challenge in 2023 with Nat Friedman and Daniel Gross. It began as a $1 million open contest. Seales says the work now moves to scholars of ancient texts: "Now we need experts who can read, edit and understand what they are saying."
The project has opened a web interface at scrollprize.org so that others can work on the scans.
Sources
- Entire Carbonized Herculaneum Scroll Virtually Unwrapped (Archaeology Magazine)
- Ancient works recovered from carbonized Herculaneum scrolls (Archaeology Wiki)
- Ancient Herculaneum scroll read for the first time after nearly 2,000 years (Archaeology News)
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