AI helps read papyrus scroll burnt to crisp during Vesuvius eruption

Previously hidden text revealed without unrolling scroll discusses stoic philosophy on ethics, art and human behaviour The surviving part of an ancient scroll that was burnt to a crisp when Mount Vesuvius erupted nearly 2,000 years ago has been virtually unwrapped and read with help from artificial intelligence. Researchers uncovered 20 columns of previously hidden text covering more than a metre of charred papyrus without physically unrolling the scroll. The work discusses stoic philosophy on ethics, art and human behaviour and dates to the second or late-third century BC. The age of the scroll, named PHerc 1667, makes it one of the oldest in a collection of hundreds recovered from the library of a luxury Roman villa in Herculaneum that was blasted by heat and buried under ash in the volcanic eruption that destroyed nearby Pompeii in AD79. The ordeal and historic handling took its toll on the scroll: at some point it was broken in half, while past efforts to unwrap the document caused the outer layers to flake off or disintegrate. What remains is half the size of the original at only 8cm tall and 2cm wide. Dr Federica Nicolardi, a papyrologist at the University of Naples Federico

Jun 24, 2026 → Jun 24, 2026