There's been a "very exciting development" in the two-year-old Vesuvius Challenge, an effort to decode ancient scrolls charred by the AD79 eruption of Mount Vesuvius. As unrolling the 2,000-year-old carbonized scrolls unearthed in Herculaneum guarantee damage, if not total destruction, scholars have been using powerful 3D X-rays and artificial intelligence software to unroll them virtually. Now, in a first, they've managed to read the title and author of the scroll dubbed PHerc. 172, CNN reports. This is the same text featured in the first ever photo of the inside of a charred scroll, which was revealed in February.
It's identified as part of On Vices, a multi-volume work by the Greek philosopher Philodemus, who authored other scrolls found in Herculaneum's Villa of the Papyri. He died a little more than a century before Vesuvius erupted and blanketed the town in debris. Marcel Roth and Micha Nowak, graduate students at Germany's University of Würzburg uncovered the author and title around the same time as Vesuvius Challenge researcher Sean Johnson. The three have now been awarded the challenge's $60,000 first title prize, the Guardian reports. Oxford University's Bodleian Libraries, where the scroll is held, notes the text could "plausibly" be read as the first book in Philodemus' On Vices series.
But the first book in the series is believed to be On Flattery, and PHerc. 172 does not reflect its contents. There are at least 10 books in the series, each covering a different topic. Book 9 is On Property Management, while Book 10 is On Arrogance, Michael McOsker, a member of the Vesuvius Challenge papyrology team, tells CNN. Researchers expect more developments as dozens of other scrolls have been scanned in recent months, though "converting the massive scan data into organized sections that are properly segmented, virtually flattened, and enhanced so that the evidence of ink can then be interpreted as actual text" takes time, McOsker tells the Guardian. (More Vesuvius stories.)
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