Reading the ancient scrolls from the eruption of Vesuvius more than 1,900 years ago has revealed the philosophical musings of key thinkers of the time, including warnings against excessive impulses and rumination on human nature, thanks to leapfrogging advances in X-rays and artificial intelligence imaging technologies.
Researchers used artificial intelligence tools to see for the first time in full the sealed scrolls burned in the eruption that buried the Roman cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum in 79 AD.
The breakthrough, which came as part of the Vesuvius Challenge, a global competition using artificial intelligence to digitally unravel carbonized scrolls, marks “an important step toward deciphering hundreds of ancient manuscripts that would otherwise fall apart with a single touch.”
The National Library of Naples houses the Herculaneum Papyri, a library of papyrus scrolls charred by the eruption of Vesuvius in the first century AD. The papyri contain a number of Greek philosophical texts. Many of the scrolls are too fragile to be physically unrolled, and researchers have turned to digital imaging techniques to reveal the papyri’s contents.
Antonio Masiello/Getty Images
Among the newly read material were 70 columns of text from On Vices, Book 1.attributed to the Epicurean philosopher and poet Philodemus, and another of his works, About the Gods, book 8.as well as almost 1.5 meters of text in 20 columns, extracted from a document dating from 200-300 AD.
“We will explore something, but we will not understand it if we somehow retreat from ourselves and from our own nature,” one of the unrolled scrolls reads in part, according to the published results of the test.
Receive daily national news
Get Canada’s daily headlines delivered to your inbox so you never miss the day’s top stories.
In an effort to accelerate technology development, the Vesuvius Challenge, launched in 2023 by a small group of tech developers and investors, said it would make all existing data, code and models for the scrolls available online and offer a US$1 million prize to the first person or team to read them in their entirety.
“Just a year ago, it would have been crazy for any of us to believe that there would be a complete scroll read completely non-invasively with hundreds of columns of text,” Brent Seals, a computer science professor at the University of Kentucky and one of the project’s founders, said at a conference broadcast from Naples, Reuters reported.
A scientist displays boxes containing remains of the Herculaneum papyrus on display at the Institute of France in Paris, September 26, 2019.
STEPHAN DE SAKUTIN/AFP via Getty Images
“Today we showed you that it is possible,” he continued. “I believe we will read every scroll in the collection.”
Federica Nicolardi, lead papyrologist at the Vesuvius Call, said technological advances have transformed her field of research, allowing hundreds of surviving but unsealed scrolls to be read in full.
“Even with the most successful methods… to physically unroll the scrolls and read them, you would have to damage them. But with virtual unrolling, we are no longer forced to choose between preserving and reading these extraordinary artifacts. We can do both,” she said.
Nicolardi said progress has been rapid: In the last 24 hours, researchers unrolled one scroll to its full length and discovered about 140 columns of invisible text. According to her, until recently they were able to detect only about 10 percent of the speakers.
“Just last night before Vesuvius, something, or rather, everything, changed,” she concluded.
— with files from Reuters
© 2026 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.