Three researchers used artificial intelligence to decipher more than 2,000 Greek letters by scanning the scrolls. For this achievement, American student Luke Variator, Swiss student Julian Schleger, and German-Egyptian doctoral student Youssef Nader will receive $700,000.
To recognize the letters, the three researchers' AI model uses the very thin texture of papyrus leaves. Using self-learning algorithms, the model was able to decode words based on changes in the structure of the leaves.
The text on the decoded papyrus fragments contains, among other things, a philosophical argument about the importance of pleasure, in which the writer points out the importance of hobbies such as music and cooking. It is not yet clear who wrote the text.
Archaeologists hope that with this new technology they will finally be able to read the vast library from Villa Herculaneum. This technique can also be used in other texts that archaeologists find difficult to read.
Some archaeologists suspect that the entire library was much larger and still underground. For researchers, all these papyrus rolls could be a goldmine in their search for more information about antiquity.
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