The peers and he burned 2,000-year-old Vezujuvius scroll, and finds ‘disgust’

With the help of X-ray image and artificial intelligence, scientists have looked within a 2,000-year-old Roman Papyrus Scroll Scorched when MT exploded. Vesuvius-and they are excited by what they see.

“This movement contains a more recoverable text than we have ever seen in a scanned Herculaneum scroll,” said the University of the University of Kentucky Brent Seales. “I stay amazed with the big volume of text that this movement promises to produce.”

Seales is a co -founder of The Vesuvius Challenge, an international competition that makes international teaching of machinery and the vision of the computer to decipher the content of the burning rolls in the volcanic eruption of 79 Es Cataclism buried the Roman cities of Pompei and Herculaneum in 20 meters of ash.

Last year, three students Won the grand prize $ 700,000 Vesuvius Challenge For their work using him to read a piece of a roll found in the remains of a Herculaneum villa, its glowing documents and reciprocal in strong bumps from strong heat from the explosion. By physically unveiling these delicate documents, it risks damaging them, so researchers have addressed technology to “unlock” them practically.

The blackened roll in the heart of the latest discovery is known as Pherc. 172, and is one of the three rolls located in Bodleian libraries at Oxford University in England. On Wednesday, the Vesuvius challenge announced a “historical progress”, revealing the successful generation of the first image showing the interior of the movement, with visible columns of Greek text.

Scientists scanned the movement in the source of the Diamond Light, a national structure in the United Kingdom that houses a synchrotron, an accelerator of particles that produce a powerful X -ray beam. Then they used to unite the resulting images, reveal the presence of paint and sharpen the clarity of images.

“This movement offers sections that are very clean and have layers that can be easily separated,” Seales said in an interview. “The paint was the real surprise, however. Its visibility from the beginning was much more pronounced than other movements. With this, I mean the paint in papyrus was visible in many places even before using methods based on To improve its readability. “

Readiness is likely due to the chemical composition of the paint, the researchers say. The paint can contain a denser pollutant, such as lead, although the team plans to perform further tests. As for the content of the document, the models of it cannot understand the language or recognize characters, at least not yet. People go there.

What is inside the movement?

Early analysis by University of Oxford’s papyrologists suggests that the author of the document was the philodemus philosophy. Most of the books recovered by the remains of the same Herculaneum library during the 1750s were written by him, and handwriting in Pherc. 172 holds a strong resemblance.

staleHe reveals the secrets of the 2,000-year-old spin burnt in the explosion of Mount Vesuviusfrom Leslie Katz

Oxford University experts have identified some words in the text, including “stupidity”, a characteristic word for the writing of the philodem and the ancient Greek word for “disgust”. They hypothesize that movement is a finished manuscript based on the presence of a common symbol at the end of a line that gives it justified right hand difference.

“Next to an extraordinary moment in history as librarians, computer scientists and classical period researchers are collaborating to see the secret,” said Richard Overall, Bodley’s librarian, in a statement.

As researchers support the text, the Vesuvius challenge is also inviting the public to help decipher the rolls in the hope of unlocking even more knowledge of antiquity.

“There is a sacred bond between a writer and readers,” said Seales. “Ideas from the ancients are extremely important and transcend the imbalance of technology between then and now.”