Scientists Use Artificial Intelligence To Decipher 2,000-Year-Old Mystery From Herculaneum Manuscript Carbonized After Mount Vesuvius Eruption
Artificial intelligence (AI) has been used in various applications, including research, medicine, and even in the search for extraterrestrial life. Two computer scientists, however, decided to use AI to decipher a charred, unopened scroll.
AI Deciphers Mysterious Message From Carbonized Scroll
A 2,000-year-old message on a carbonized Herculaneum manuscript had remained a mystery to scientists. Experts feared that the knowledge within it would be lost forever. But thanks to AI, two computer scientists were able to reveal some words on the scroll that got burned after the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79CE.
The same word, "πoρφύραc," which denotes purple dye or clothing made of purple, was independently discovered by Luke Farritor of Nebraska and Youssef Nader of Berlin.
Professor Brent Seales, a computer scientist from the University of Kentucky, made the discovery public by launching the "Vesuvius Challenge" in March and offering monetary rewards to anyone who could decipher the texts. The scrolls themselves cannot be unrolled since doing so runs the danger of permanently destroying them. They have been buried for 1,700 years and are incredibly delicate.
Professor Seales and his team made an incredibly high-resolution scan of the interior of the rolled-up scrolls using a particle accelerator in order to prevent further deterioration of the manuscripts.
Professor Seales anticipated that machine learning will be able to interpret the faint traces of ink even if the ink is no longer there. He announced the challenge by releasing hundreds of 3D photos of two scrolls that had been rolled up, together with an artificial intelligence computer trained to recognize characters in the ink marks.
The two scrolls were discovered in a Herculaneum villa excavation in the 1750s that was thought to have been owned by Julius Caesar's father-in-law, Lucius Calpurnius Piso Caesoninus.
Farritor was the first to read a word from the scroll and was awarded the $40,000 (£32,934) first-ten-letter prize. Nader came in second with an even more distinct image and was awarded $10,000 (£8,233).
I casually examined my most recent code outputs on my phone while out and about at night, Farritor, a SpaceX intern, stated. He added that he didn't expect any significant results, so when half a dozen letters appeared on the screen, he was completely delighted.
Graduate student in biorobotics Nader said it was like looking back in a time machine. For him, it was thrilling to be reading text that we did not comprehend but that we knew had been left for us by individuals thousands of years ago.
Significance of the Word 'Purple'
Except for a few that a monk meticulously unraveled over several decades, previous attempts to unroll the scrolls destroyed several of the texts. The number of ancient books still extant would double if the scrolls could be read without being damaged.
The Library of Herculaneum's preserved texts are wholly unknown from other sources, according to Federica Nicolardi, assistant professor of papyrology at the Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II. According to Dr. Nicolardi, the term purple is fascinating to learn about due to the significance of this color in ancient cultures.
The name might relate to the color purple, clothing, the status of individuals who could buy the dye, or even the mollusks because purple dye was highly prized in ancient Rome and was manufactured from the glands of sea snails, Dr. Nicolardi explained.
The next task for researchers will be to decipher more than a single word from the text and, eventually whole works. The grand prize amounting to $700,000 (£576,355) will be given to the first individual to read four sections of text before the end of 2023. A significant portion of the $1 million (£822,735) prize money has yet to be claimed.
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