Overview
- The Vesuvius Challenge team said on Thursday, June 25, 2026, that it has for the first time virtually unwrapped and read an entire sealed Herculaneum papyrus (PHerc. 1667) without physically opening it.
- The recovered portion spans roughly 1.4 metres and about 22 columns of Greek text that papyrologists place in a Stoic ethical context and that names Aristocreon, a nephew and disciple of Chrysippus, dating the text to about the 2nd century BC.
- Researchers used micrometre‑scale phase‑contrast X‑ray microtomography at ESRF’s BM18 beamline to map the sheet geometry, reconstructed and flattened the wound surface, and trained machine‑learning models to detect ink that papyrologists then transcribed and reviewed.
- Independent checks include a higher‑resolution 3D ink segmentation in PHerc. Paris 4 that matches a 2023 reading and a title/author identification on PHerc. 139 as Philodemus’ On Gods, Book 8, strengthening confidence in the methods.
- About 45 scrolls have been scanned so far, more than 600 remain unopened, and the project has released data and code publicly and offered a $1 million prize to accelerate broader algorithmic progress while keeping human scholars central to interpretation.