Teams from around the world have the opportunity to win $250,000 in prizes by improving AI and accelerating decoding through research
After the volcanic eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD79, many ancient scrolls were carbonised in the library of a luxury villa in Herculaneum. Researchers are now initiating a worldwide competition to decipher these scrolls, as they have shown that an AI program can extract letters and symbols from high-resolution X-ray images of the delicate, unrolled documents.
Led by Prof Brent Seales, researchers used a machine-learning algorithm to decipher ink on surface and hidden layers of scrolls, using high-resolution X-ray images. The team is now launching a global contest, releasing software and 3D X-ray images of scrolls to encourage research groups to improve AI and speed up the decoding process of the Herculaneum scrolls. The challenge offers $250,000 in prizes. The scrolls were carbonised by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD79, making them the only surviving intact library from antiquity.
The contest offers a top prize of $150,000 for the first team to read four text passages from the inner layers of the scrolls by the end of 2023. In addition, teams can win progress prizes of $50,000 for accurately detecting ink on the papyri from the 3D X-ray scans. The two unopened scrolls are part of the Epicurean philosophical texts found in the buried villa’s library in the 1750s. Belonging to the Institut de France in Paris, the scrolls are among hundreds found in the villa that is believed to have once belonged to a wealthy Roman statesman, possibly Lucius Calpurnius Piso Caesoninus, Julius Caesar’s father-in-law.
Despite the black ink on the charred papyri being invisible to the naked eye, infrared images of surface fragments have uncovered Greek letters and symbols. Prof Brent Seales and his team utilized these images in combination with high-resolution X-ray images of the same fragments to train their machine-learning algorithm to read the lettering in the X-ray images. The algorithm was then able to identify previously unknown text in hidden layers of the tightly rolled scrolls.
Most Herculaneum scrolls studied thus far are in ancient Greek, but some may contain Latin texts or poems by Sappho, or even the treatise on his drunkenness by Mark Anthony. Prof. Seales hopes to uncover evidence of early Christian philosophy, and the first-century turmoil surrounding the evolution of Christianity and the Judeo-Christian tradition.
According to Tobias Reinhardt, a professor of the Latin language and literature at the University of Oxford, the idea of bringing in more experts to tackle these problems is convincing. He believes that the competition is a more effective way to draw attention from the vast and rapidly developing field of research than targeting individual researchers or companies.
