This week, we delve into one of the ancient world's biggest mysteries: the Herculaneum scrolls. Computer scientist Brent Seales of the University of Kentucky talks about a journey that has taken him from Mars to Beowulf to the Dead Sea and beyond. AI has been key to finally reading what's inside the scrolls -- but this is a story about human ingenuity, and what it takes to make an impossible dream come true.

These are hundreds of Greek and Latin papyri, buried by the Vesuvius eruption in 79 AD and dug up in the 1700s. The scrolls were crushed and carbonised; when anyone tried to read them, they crumbled. Scholars had to accept the rest would never be opened.

This is the only intact library we have from the classical world – complete texts, direct from the pens of ancient scribes. Yet we can’t read them.

Until now. These unopenable scrolls are now being read, through the Vesuvius Challenge, which offers prizes for teams using AI to find the ink in X-ray scans. I’ve written several articles on this, and the pace of discovery has been jawdropping: scholars could soon read the whole library.

But solving this problem hasn't just been about switching on AI. For me, the truly fascinating story is the 20 years of imagination, invention and persuasion that led to this point, all essentially due to one man who persevered even when everyone else thought the idea was crazy.

Brent Seales

https://educelab.engr.uky.edu/w-brent-seales

Vesuvius Challenge

https://scrollprize.org/

Schmidt Sciences

https://www.schmidtsciences.org/focus-area-ai/

My articles:

Scaling up the Vesuvius Challenge: Apr 2025

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-01087-y

AI could rewrite history: Jan 2025

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-04161-z

First passages revealed: Feb 2024

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-00346-8

Brent Seales' quest: Jul 2018

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/buried-ash-vesuvius-scrolls-are-being-read-new-xray-technique-180969358/

Journal papers:

Reading En-Gedi scroll

https://www.science.org/doi/full/10.1126/sciadv.1601247

Recovering Herculaneum ink

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0215775

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