How researchers used AI to read the Herculaneum papyri, charred in 79 AD by Mount Vesuvius' eruption, potentially rewriting key parts of ancient world history
Well, make a 3D CT scan, use the images to virtually unfold, recognize the ink drops, and off you go. Amazing work by three students (from Berlin, Nebraska and ETH Zurich). … X: Nat Friedman / @natfriedman : Ten months ago, we launched the Vesuvius Challenge to solve the ancient problem of the Herculaneum Papyri, a library of scrolls that were flash-fried by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD. Today we are overjoyed to announce that our crazy project has succeeded. After 2000... [image] Alexia Bonatsos / @alexia : Getting AI to think about the Roman Empire for you is an achievement unlocked. And, jokes aside, this is the coolest thing I've seen this tech applied to; Can't wait to see what other knowledge we'll end up unearthing. Demis Hassabis / @demishassabis : Huge congrats to Nat and team, amazing work and great use of AI! Can't wait to read some of these ancient books that were thought to be lost to the world! Dan Walden / @dwaldenwrites : this is genuinely breathtaking. the greatest cache of untranslated literary and philosophical texts will be made accessible at a hitherto undreamed-of pace. philologist bat signal going up round the world Chris Anderson / @tedchris : Incredible achievement right here.... Nicholas A. Christakis / @nachristakis : I've been tracking this (and so should you), and it's like a Holy Grail that might be within our grasp. Incredible. “Our hope is that the success of the Vesuvius Challenge catalyzes the excavation of the villa, that the main library is discovered, and that whatever we find... Jason Nethercut / @jasonnethercut : Within a few years we may be able to read over 800 entire scrolls from this library that have previously been too charred to decipher. A development in our understanding of ancient literature whose magnitude will rival the Renaissance! Theo Nash / @theo_nash : I don't honestly know how to process this. Is there any reason now to doubt that we'll get complete scrolls soon enough? Papyrology — if that's even the right word for this — could once again revolutionise Classics. Michael McGill / @mcgillmd921 : This is absolutely incredible, mind-blowing news 🤯 Some brilliant humans, with the help of technology, have managed to read scrolls burned by a volcano 2,000 years ago. Just imagine the wealth of “lost” ancient sources coming our way! What are you most excited to see? Frances Haugen / @franceshaugen : It's so easy to focus on just the scary parts of how fast technology is advancing, so I try to light up the exciting parts when I stumble across them. AI gave this new portal to the past - and this historic milestone is just 5% of one of thousands of scrolls! 🌋 📜 🤯... Daniel Gross / @danielgross : An amazing demonstration of what's possible when an internet-native like @natfriedman focuses the web on a particular problem. It's like a magnifying glass that concentrates diffuse rays of human intellect into a focused beam that can cut through any task. JP Posma / @janpaul123 : 📜🌋👀 FOLKS — WE DID IT!!!!!!!!!!!! Thanks to all of your hard work and late nights, the Vesuvius Challenge actually worked!!!!!! Huge congrats to the winners and runner ups, and to everyone who has participated in one way or another. Dwarkesh Patel / @dwarkesh_sp : Who knew this would turn out to be correct? “I think it's very likely that somebody listening to this could be the one who wins the grand prize and decodes the scrolls.” Congrats @LukeFarritor!!! [video] Luke Farritor / @lukefarritor : I did this while interning at starbase! @elonmusk Mike Solana / @micsolana : buried for 2000 years, a team of brilliant researchers employ the use of powerful new technology to reveal what are sure to be an earth-shattering bevy of insights. the insights: “fuck the stoics man what a bunch of little bitches” @whitepill_pw : “The thoughts of our ancestors, locked in mud and ash for 2000 years, hidden in darkness — now, with the light of a worldwide effort shining upon them, finally seen again.” The Herculaneum Scrolls, also known as the Villa of the Papyri Scrolls, are a collection of ancient Roman... [image] Max Meyer / @mualphaxi : The actual G.O.A.T @LukeFarritor is a *checks notes* rocket engineer AND ancient payprus reader. Technology is amazing. We're going to the stars and seeing more of the past than ever. Ross Douthat / @douthatnyt : Prediction: exposure to more of the ancient world will dovetail with increasing weirdness in our own. https://twitter.com/... Patrick Hsu / @pdhsu : Our lost ancient scrolls, revived with AI. They'll make documentaries about this Congratulations to the team Nat Friedman / @natfriedman : On another note, after paying out these prizes, the Vesuvius Challenge is now poor, so any wealthy donors who want to step up and fund our master plan, please get in touch! https://scrollprize.org/... Elon Musk / @elonmusk : This is cool YoussefNader / @youssef_m_nader : It has been absolutely phenomenal working on the Vesuvius Challenge. The vision from @natfriedman and the foundation layed down by Prof. Seales and his team, make me every bit grateful to have the opportunity to score this touchdown! Daniel Ek / @eldsjal : Very cool to see how fast this was solved by the community. This makes me think - what are other problem domains that could benefit from a similar type of effort? Julian Schilliger / @julischillij : Thank you to everyone for this amazing challenge! It is such a joy to decipher those golden treasures from the past! I am looking forward to continue our amazing journey @catimperator : Talkin about the papyri...this might be a revolutionary moment for the Classics! Imagine what could be waiting for us. Lost books of Livy, or Polybius lost works. And that's just a start. Read more here! https://scrollprize.org/... Ellen Huet / @ellenhuet : new cover story for @BW!! @ashleevance and i have the inside story of these ultra-fragile 2,000yo Roman scrolls and the volunteer army of nerds competing to use AI to decipher their secrets and today's astonishing news: it's actually working https://www.bloomberg.com/... [image] John Coogan / @johncoogan : AI guys will literally go to the ends of the earth to find more training tokens. Casey Handmer, PhD / @cjhandmer : I can finally post this now. A somewhat solipsistic view of our progress with reading scrolls. Brought to you by Mathematica and ffmpeg. [video] Ellen Huet / @ellenhuet : this story has a poetic kernel about man and machine: the initial breakthrough (the crackle pattern) came from @CJHandmer's human eyes. then that crackle pattern was used to train an AI model to identify ink we can't see. that mix of human and AI is now bringing our past to life Bill Grueskin / @bgrueskin : Everything is terrible, except for the geniuses who have managed to decipher hidden scrolls from Herculaneum, the town next to Pompeii that was also destroyed by the Vesuvius eruption 2,000 years ago. Amazing piece via @ashleevance and @ellenhuet https://www.bloomberg.com/... Ashlee Vance / @ashleevance : .@natfriedman is into some weird stuff. one day he's trying to read scrolls from Ancient Rome. And, in so doing, shaming the rest of you lazy bums just talking about the Roman Empire on TikTok And the next . . . https://www.bloomberg.com/... JP Posma / @janpaul123 : @natfriedman WE DID IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Ashlee Vance / @ashleevance : Sometimes life and humans and tech are just awesome. Here's a 🧵 on such awesomeness. It releates to these ancient Greek and Roman scrolls that we can now read thanks to AI and some creative folks Story here https://www.bloomberg.com/... [image] Kilian Fleischer / @kilianfleische1 : @natfriedman Congratulations and best wishes from Naples! I was waiting for this since I first heard about the scan of a scroll in 2009. For me as a Herculaneum papyrologist this represents a milestone in classical scholarship and will revolutionize the entire field. 🌋🌋🌋🌋🌋🌋 Balaji / @balajis : Amazing project by @natfriedman. Amazing work by the winners. Much better use of capital than donating to an endowment. A real contribution to humanity. Lulu Cheng Meservey / @lulumeservey : A library of ancient scrolls, mutilated but preserved by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius, now read by the first humans in two millennia thanks to AI and an international volunteer brigade of nerds. If you read one thing today, make it this: Ashlee Vance / @ashleevance : One of the coolest stories I've ever worked on. Through an unusual contest and some amazing AI, we may soon have new works to read from Sophocles, Sappho, Aristotle and others. Scoop here with @ellenhuet https://www.bloomberg.com/... [image] LinkedIn: Rita J. King : After 2000 years, ancient scrolls flash-fried in the eruption of Mount Vesuvius are being read for the first time. … Ashlee Vance : One of the coolest stories I've ever worked on. — Last year, Nat Friedman and William Seales started a contest to see if AI could be used to read a stash of ancient scrolls burried by Vesuvius. … Forums: Hacker News : Vesuvius Challenge 2023 Grand Prize awarded: we can read the first scroll r/MachineLearning : The Vesuvius Challenge prize has been awarded! [N] r/slatestarcodex : First passages of rolled-up Herculaneum scroll revealed r/Futurology : First passages of rolled-up Herculaneum scroll revealed Sinic / Lobsters : Vesuvius Challenge 2023 Grand Prize awarded: we can read the scrolls
Context & Ripple Effects
The result builds on the earlier student-led breakthrough reading a carbonized Roman scroll, turning a contest proof point into a broader effort to recover text from the Herculaneum collection. The Vesuvius Challenge brought CT imaging, virtual unfolding, and ink detection together around a corpus that conventional reading could not access.
It also fits an emerging line of AI-assisted recovery from fragmented cultural records, later illustrated by AI work reassembling digitized Gilgamesh tablet fragments. The distinction here is that the source material is being read without physically opening it.
First-order effects
- The Vesuvius Challenge’s contributors can provide scholars with newly legible passages from scrolls previously inaccessible because of carbonization, creating material for classical and historical interpretation.
- The project validates a workflow in which CT-derived imagery and models trained to detect ink patterns are used to identify text on virtual scroll surfaces.
Second-order effects
- Success gives archives and research teams a concrete reason to prioritize high-resolution scans and computational processing for fragile artifacts rather than relying solely on physical conservation.
- Classics scholars will need to validate readings and interpret recovered passages, shifting the bottleneck from access to text toward transcription, authentication, and contextual analysis.
Third-order effects
- If the method proves repeatable across the larger Herculaneum collection, noninvasive imaging plus machine learning could become a standard discovery workflow for damaged documentary archives.
- The broader shift is from AI chiefly analyzing already-readable digital text to AI making previously unavailable primary sources searchable and interpretable; its historical value will depend on reliable scholarly verification.
The trend: AI is increasingly being paired with scientific imaging to turn inaccessible physical archives into usable research data.