They read a charred scroll of Philodemus 2,000 years after the eruption of Mount Vesuvius – They found the word “disgust”

An ancient papyrus, charred and found in a Roman villa buried under ash during the eruption of Vesuvius nearly 2,000 years ago, has been identified as the work of an ancient Greek philosopher.

Researchers were able to discern the title and author from the Herculaneum scroll after using X-ray technology to scan the charred artifact and digitally unroll it. According to the Guardian, the ink traces revealed that the text belonged to Philodemus, an Epicurean philosopher from the first century B.C. This scroll is housed among others in libraries in Oxford.

“It’s the first scroll where the ink was visible in the scan,” stated Dr. Michael McAusker, a papyrologist at University College London, who is collaborating with Oxford researchers to decode the text. “Until now, nobody knew its content or if it even had writing,” he noted.

This scroll is one of the many discovered in a luxurious Roman villa, believed to have belonged to Julius Caesar’s father-in-law. The villa was covered in ash and pumice when Herculaneum, located near Naples, was annihilated during the cataclysmic eruption in 79 AD.

Excavations in the 18th century unearthed numerous ancient scrolls, most currently in the National Library of Naples. However, the severe burning has rendered many documents too fragile to unwrap, making the ink nearly impossible to read.

The latest findings are part of the Vesuvius Challenge, a global contest initiated in 2023 aimed at enhancing X-ray scroll reading techniques.

Last year, a team of computer science students received a $700,000 grand prize for developing artificial intelligence software that successfully read 2,000 ancient Greek letters from another scroll.

The word “disgust”

The scroll, named PHerc. 172, was scanned last July in Oxfordshire. Notably, ink was identifiable in the X-ray images, with researchers finding the ancient Greek word for “disgust” at least twice within the document.

Further investigations by Sean Johnson as part of the Vesuvius Challenge, along with efforts by Marcel Roth and Mika Novak at the University of Würzburg, revealed the title and author of the work, earning the competition’s first title prize of $60,000 (£45,200).

According to the Guardian, Philodemus’ work, from which the scroll originates, encompasses ten books that address subjects like arrogance, greed, flattery, and household management.

Experts anticipate revealing even more about these scrolls soon. Eighteen additional scrolls were scanned in March, and another twenty are set to be depicted in Grenoble this week.

“We observe evidence of ink in many newly scanned scrolls, but we have yet to transform that ink into coherent text,” explained Dr. Brent Sills, a computer scientist at the University of Kentucky and a co-founder of the Vesuvius Challenge. “Our current challenge is to convert large scan data into organized sections that are properly flattened and streamlined, allowing for interpretation of the ink data as actual text.”

“The advancements are accelerating rapidly… All the technological progress in this field has emerged in just the last three to five years, which is remarkable for classical studies. Everything we’re uncovering from the library at Herculaneum is novel to us,” Dr. McAusker remarked.