Ancient scrolls are being ‘read’ by machine learning — with human knowledge to detect language and make sense of them

By C. Michael Sampson, University of Manitoba

A groundbreaking announcement for the recovery of lost ancient literature was recently made. Using a non-invasive method that harnesses machine learning, an international trio of scholars retrieved 15 columns of ancient Greek text from within a carbonized papyrus from Herculaneum, a seaside Roman town eight kilometres southeast of Naples, Italy.

Their achievement earned them a US$700,000 grand prize from the Vesuvius Challenge. The challenge sought to incentivize technological development by inviting public participation in the research.

It emerged from collaboration between computer scientist Brent Seales — who has a long-standing interest in non-invasive technologies for studying manuscripts — and technology investors Nat Friedman and Daniel Gross.

While the developments are exciting, technology is only part of the progress of scholarship. The work of reading and analyzing the new Greek and Latin texts recovered from the papyri will fall to human beings.

Buried in ash

Like Pompeii, Herculaneum was buried by the catastrophic eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 CE.

Much of the ancient town remains underground. But in 1752, excavation uncovered hundreds of papyrus scrolls in the library of an elaborate Roman villa. The Herculaneum papyri are the largest surviving example of an intact ancient library preserved in the archaeological record: the library was found as it actually existed in 79 CE.

The precise number of books is unknown, says Michael McOsker, a research fellow in papyrology at University College London, and different methods of estimating give different results.

Carbonized papyri

Starved of oxygen, the intense heat of Vesuvius’ pyroclastic flow carbonized (but did not ignite) the papyri. Resembling lumps of coal to the eye, 18th-century excavators did not immediately recognize them as ancient books.

The papyri are so brittle that many were destroyed by early attempts to access their texts. Studying them has therefore always required ingenuity. In 1754, a conservator and priest at the Vatican library devised a machine for slowly unrolling them.

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