(ORDO NEWS) — More than 600 scrolls buried in the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD can be of great value of that time, ranging from unread poems by the Greek poetess Sappho to early Christian philosophy.
But we can’t read them yet because the scrolls are charred.
The researchers hope that the use of artificial intelligence (AI) and the $250,000 prize pool will allow insight into the contents of two specific scrolls.
The eruption of Vesuvius claimed the lives of thousands of people in Pompeii and Herculaneum. The heat of the eruption charred many of the scrolls, including two now held by the Institut de France.
They were discovered in the 1750s during the excavation of a villa, which, according to some sources, belonged to the father-in-law of Julius Caesar.
Most of the ancient texts of that time are degradable, but these scrolls are not.
Hoping to unlock the secrets of the surviving scrolls, Professor Brent Seals of the University of Kentucky launched the Vesuvius Challenge, in which people from all over the world are asked to help analyze data collected by the research team.
The group has developed a program (artificial intelligence) that takes x-rays of papyrus and feeds them into an algorithm that helps read Greek letters and symbols from multiple layers of a rolled scroll.
This system can distinguish thin layers of rolled papyrus, allowing the scroll to be deciphered.
These x-rays are available to research teams who will join the search for the text contained in the scrolls as part of the Vesuvius Challenge.
A $150,000 prize is awarded to the first team to read four passages of text from the scrolls in 2023, with up to $250,000 in prize money for the entire challenge.
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