At first glance, the Herculaneum scrolls look unremarkable, like pieces of coal. After surviving the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in year 79, the nearly 2,000-year-old documents would crumble if anyone attempted to unroll them, and surviving pieces with writing were considered to be nearly illegible to the human eye — until now.

After two millennia, the first full word from one of the unopened ancient papyri has been decoded with the help of computer technology and advanced artificial intelligence.

“Porphyras,” which means “purple” in Greek, was found first by University of Nebraska computer science student Luke Farritor, who participated in the contest, which calls for competitors to apply a technique known as “virtual wrapping” to two rolled-up scrolls released on the site, in an attempt to decipher the hidden words.

Virtual unwrapping begins with computer tomography, an X-ray procedure that is used to scan each coiled-up, warped papyrus. After following along the curved layers in the scan, researchers then virtually flatten the scrolls and explore them using advanced AI that has been trained to find the ink on the page. The technology was created by University of Kentucky computer science professor Brent Seales and has been in development for nearly 20 years now.

The 79 A.D. eruption of Vesuvius, a volcano located near Naples, Italy, covered the ancient Roman cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum in volcanic mud. Herculaneum and the scrolls remained buried until the city’s accidental rediscovery by a worker drilling for a well in the early 1700s, according to the Herculaneum Society.

Approximately 1,100 carbonized scrolls, now referred to as the Herculaneum scrolls, were recovered from a building that was believed to be Julius Caesar’s father-in-law’s house, according to the University of Kentucky. The collection is referred to as the only known large-scale library from the classical antiquity.

In the 19th century, hundreds of scrolls were pulled apart by machine and the brittle papyri were left in pieces, according to the university’s website.

Michael McOsker, a postdoctoral researcher in papyrology at the University College London, has been studying the scrolls that were previously unrolled, which had caused the papyri to be fragmentary and hard to read.

“Obviously, there’s a long way to go before we can read a whole roll, which is the real goal, but I’m sure it’s a solvable problem now, and one that might not even take that long,” McOsker said.

(SD-Agencies)

Words to Learn 相关词汇

【难以辨认的】nányǐ biànrèn de illegible impossible or almost impossible to read because of being very untidy or not clear

【莎草纸学】shācǎozhǐ xué papyrology the care, reading, and interpretation of ancient documents written on papyrus

赫库兰尼姆古卷经历了公元79年的维苏威火山爆发，乍一看并不起眼，像一块煤。如果有人想展开这些近2000年前的文件，它们马上就会碎掉，而幸存有文字的卷轴此前肉眼几乎无法辨认。

时隔两千年之后，在计算机技术和先进人工智能的帮助下，这些未打开的古代莎草纸卷中的第一个完整文字被解码了。内布拉斯加大学计算机专业学生卢克•法里托发现了“Porphyras”这个词，它在希腊语中是“紫色”的意思。

虚拟解码的第一步是计算机断层扫描，即用 X 射线扫描卷曲变形的莎草纸。在沿着弧形层进行扫描后，研究人员利用经过训练的人工智能把卷轴虚拟平展，寻找页面上的墨迹。这项技术由肯塔基大学计算机教授布伦特•西尔斯首创，已研发了近20年。

公元 79 年，位于意大利那不勒斯附近的维苏威火山爆发，火山泥覆盖了古罗马城市庞贝和赫库兰尼姆。赫库兰尼姆协会称，古城和卷轴一直埋在地下，直到17世纪初被一名工人打井时意外发现。

肯塔基大学称，大约1100卷碳化卷轴（称为赫库兰尼姆卷轴）是从一栋据信是凯撒大帝岳父家的建筑中发掘出来的。该发现被称为古典时期唯一已知的大型藏书。

肯塔基大学网站介绍， 19 世纪间数以百计的卷轴被机器强行拉开，易碎的莎草纸成了碎片。

伦敦大学学院莎草纸学博士后研究员迈克尔•麦考斯克一直在研究卷轴，它们支离破碎，难以辨认。

麦考斯克说：“显然，要想读懂一整卷莎草纸还有很长的路要走，这是我们的真正目标，但现在我相信这个目标能实现，甚至不需要那么久。”

(Translated by Debra)