(COVER IMAGE DESCRIPTION)
From object to text. The sealed and carbonized scroll (top left); cross-sections of the X-ray scan revealing the spiral sheet inside (top); and the unrolled surface, where columns of Greek writing emerge as the ink trace is recovered (bottom).
Imagine a papyrus that survived a volcanic eruption, but at a cruel price: it became so fragile that opening it meant destroying it. Reading it meant losing it. For almost two thousand years, hundreds of scrolls from the Herculaneum library held this impossible secret, reduced to blocks of charcoal by Vesuvius in 79 AD.
On June 25, 2026, that pact was broken. For the first time, a Herculaneum scroll has been read in full, from beginning to end, without being opened. And the most remarkable part of the story is how it was done: with artificial intelligence.
How to read a papyrus without opening it
The scroll is called PHerc. 1667 and began as what it appeared to be: a black, rolled-up mass of charred papyrus. No one unrolled it because tests had been conducted with others that were completely destroyed. Instead, the team scanned it with ultra-high-resolution X-rays at a synchrotron in Grenoble—an instrument capable of distinguishing layers of papyrus thinner than a wafer—and digitally reconstructed the sheet that was spiraled inside.
Then came the real challenge. There was ink on the papyrus. Yes, but an ink so similar to the charcoal surrounding it that it seemed almost invisible. This is where machine learning comes in: models were trained to detect these minute traces of ink and "bring them to light," column by column. What was indistinguishable to the human eye for centuries, the machine made legible. Then, a team of papyrologists reviewed and transcribed each reading.
I want to emphasize this last point: AI didn't replace the expert. It expanded upon them. The machine was the necessary tool that allowed true specialists to work. It's exactly the same relationship I'm arguing regarding AI in law: the tool executes, but human judgment is absolutely essential.
And what did the papyrus say?
Here comes the most exciting part. The recovered text is a philosophical treatise on ethics, and everything points to it being a Stoic work from the 2nd century BC. It speaks of human nature, of impulse, and of the moral progress of individuals. In its last surviving column, a name appears: Aristocreon, nephew and disciple of the great Stoic philosopher Chrysippus.
In other words: thought that had been shrouded in darkness for two millennia can once again be read. And it returns speaking to us, precisely, about how to live better. One of the phrases that can be read for the first time in two thousand years reads:
«…we will investigate something, but we will not be able to understand it if we somehow distance ourselves from ourselves and our own nature…»
It is quite remarkable that a technology of the future is returning such an ancient lesson to us: do not stray from your own nature.
It wasn't just one scroll
The work goes beyond a single papyrus. On a second scroll (PHerc. Paris 4), a higher-resolution image made the ink directly visible within the papyrus, confirming that the reading achieved by the community in 2023 was real. And on a third (PHerc. 139), the title and author were recovered: On the Gods, Book 8, by the Epicurean philosopher Philodemus. Knowing what a scroll contains before opening it changes the game.
Why is this a victory for open science?
Behind this milestone is the Vesuvius Challenge, a public, donation-funded challenge to read the papyri in full view of everyone. The "virtual unrolling" technique was developed by Professor Brent Seales and his lab, and in 2023 a global community of contestants was launched.
What I love most: a large part of the team that read this scroll first entered as contestants. People from all over the world who faced an impossible problem, won prizes for their progress, and ended up forming the team. Furthermore, everything is open: the data, the reconstructed images, the transcriptions, and the code are published so that anyone can check it and continue reading the hundreds of scrolls that remain sealed.
What I take away from this
We talk a lot about AI as a threat, as a replacement, as a shortcut. And every now and then something like this happens: a machine reads, without touching it, a book that had been silent for two thousand years, and gives us back the voice of someone who thought about how to be better people.
It's not AI against humanity. It's AI at the service of what is most human in us: curiosity, memory, and ideas. Hundreds of scrolls still await discovery. An entire library of philosophy and poetry about to be brought back to light.
Sources
- Official announcement of the discovery, Vesuvius Challenge — An entire Herculaneum scroll has been read for the first time: scrollprize.org/firstscroll
- Scientific paper (preprint, PDF) — Complete virtual unwrapping and reading of a rolled Herculaneum papyrus: scrollprize.org/pdf/main.pdf
- Open project data: scrollprize.org/data
- Code on GitHub: github.com/ScrollPrize/villa
