Scientists and scholars have joined forces to resurrect a 2,000-year-old charred papyrus scroll using artificial intelligence. The previously illegible text was damaged during the violent eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD, which caused the deaths of over 1,500 people and the destruction of Pompeii and Herculeum.

“It’s a historic moment,” said Robert Fowler, emeritus professor of Greek at University of Bristol and chair of the Herculaneum Society.

The deciphered scroll belongs to the only known surviving library from ancient Roman times, once located in a luxury villa in Herculaneum thought to be owned by Julius Caesar’s (100BC-44BC) father-in-law. During the catastrophic eruption, over 1,800 scrolls in the vast library were carbonised by the intense blast of heat, ash, and pumice. Excavations in the eighteenth century recovered more than 1,000 whole or partial scrolls that had been preserved under 20 metres of mud. But the black ink had become completely unreadable, and many scrolls crumbled to pieces when researchers tried to unfurl them.

The recent breakthrough was made as part of the Vesuvius Challenge, a machine learning and computer vision competition. Launched in 2023 with the help of Silicon Valley backers, it sought to decipher the scrolls using cutting edge technology. The first step was taking high-resolution CT scans of the scroll at Diamond Light Source, the UK’s national synchrotron facility in Oxfordshire. Brent Seales, a computer scientist at the University of Kentucky who founded the contest, played a key role in “virtually unwrapping” the CT images and training AI algorithms to detect the presence of ink.

Seales released the algorithms for contestants to build on in the challenge. A team of three computer-savvy students won the grand prize of $700,000 (£554,000); Youssef Nader in Germany, Luke Farritor in the US, and Julian Schilliger in Switzerland transcribed more than 2,000 Greek letters from the scroll, giving scholars their first real insight into its contents.

“It’s been an incredibly rewarding journey,” commented Youssef. “The adrenaline rush is what kept us going. It was insane. It meant working 20-something hours a day. I didn’t know when one day ended and the next day started.”

The newfound text discusses the sources of human pleasure. From music to food, the author delved into the delicacy of eating capers and the beauty of the colour purple. Scholars believe it was probably written by the Epicurean philosopher Philodemus (c. 110-c. 40 BC).  “This is the start of a revolution in Herculaneum papyrology and in Greek philosophy in general,” explained Dr Federica Nicolardi, a papyrologist at the University of Naples Federico II.

“When we launched this less than a year ago, I honestly wasn’t sure it’d work,” said Nat Friedman, a US tech executive and founding sponsor of the challenge. “You know, people say money can’t buy happiness, but they have no imagination. This has been pure joy. It’s magical what happened, it couldn’t have been scripted better.”