Overview
- The Vesuvius Challenge team announced on Thursday that it has virtually unwrapped and read in full PHerc. 1667, a carbonized Herculaneum scroll previously sealed since the AD 79 eruption.
- The reading used high‑resolution phase‑contrast X‑ray microtomography at the ESRF BM18 beamline, 3D reconstruction and virtual flattening, plus machine‑learning models trained to detect ink on carbonized papyrus.
- Papyrologists identify PHerc. 1667 as a Stoic‑oriented ethical treatise that names Aristocreon and likely dates to the 2nd century BC, while separate scans made ink directly visible in PHerc. Paris 4 and PHerc. 139 yielded a Philodemus title attribution.
- All tomographic data, reconstructed surfaces, code and transcriptions have been released publicly and the project has offered a $1 million prize to accelerate independent teams to read other scrolls.
- The technique is designed to scale to hundreds of unopened rolls and the open, community‑driven approach could change how scholars access lost classical works and preserve fragile cultural heritage.