News from the ancient world
Pompeii and Herculaneum were Roman towns on the Bay of Naples in southern Italy. The eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79 buried both. Ash and pumice covered Pompeii, while Herculaneum lay under deeper volcanic deposits. Excavations began in the 18th century. The towns are now among the best-preserved Roman sites, with houses, streets, wall paintings and the remains of victims. Herculaneum also kept a library of carbonised papyrus scrolls.
Recent work uses new imaging and AI to read what the towns left behind. Researchers recovered nearly 1.5 metres of text from the charred scroll PHerc. 1667 without unrolling it. It is a Greek philosophical work of around the 2nd century BC that may be Stoic. In Pompeii, a lighting technique found 79 unknown graffiti of love and insults in a theatre corridor. They sit beside about 200 known messages on a wall excavated in 1794. The Pompeii park has also made its first AI image of a victim, with the University of Padua. He probably shielded his head with a mortar.
AI & Archaeology · Ancient Greek texts; scroll buried AD 79 · Herculaneum (PHerc. 1667), Campania, Italy
In a blind test, 20 specialists rated its restorations at least as good as human ones in 77% of cases, but the study is not yet peer reviewed.
AI & Archaeology · Buried AD 79 · Herculaneum, Campania, Italy
In test scrolls charred in a furnace, letters written with leaded ink stood out brightly in X-ray scans, a stronger signal for the software and AI that read closed scrolls.
AI & Archaeology · 2nd century BC · Herculaneum, Campania, Italy
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.
AI & Archaeology · AD 79 · Pompeii, Porta Stabia necropolis, Campania, Italy
The image, made with the University of Padua, is the Pompeii park's first created with AI tools and is called an experimental prototype, not a definitive likeness.
Greece & Rome · 1st century AD, before AD 79 · Pompeii, Campania, Italy
A lighting technique found the scratched messages beside about 200 known ones, on a wall excavated in 1794 that millions of visitors pass every year.