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A year and a half ago, we learned of the initial AI-assisted decipherment of a charred scroll that had been buried for two millennia under the volcanic ashes of Mt. Vesuvius (eruption 79AD) in the city of Herculaneum:  "AI (and human ingenuity) to the rescue" (2/6/24).

Since then, researchers have continued to work on the scroll until now they have identified the precise text on it:

Lost Work of Greek Philosopher Philodemus Unearthed from Herculaneum Scroll
By Tasos Kokkinidis, Greek Reporter (May 6, 2025)

Philodemus is a key figure in the Epicurean tradition, so this recovery of one of his lost works is an important event in the history of Greek philosophy. 

Thanks to cutting-edge X-ray imaging and digital unwrapping techniques, researchers have identified the scroll as part of Philodemus’s multi-volume treatise On Vices, marking the first time that a scroll from Herculaneum has yielded such precise authorial and textual information through non-invasive methods.

We found the title of a scroll for the first time!

This cylinder of charcoal turns out to be "On Vices, Book 1" by Philodemus pic.twitter.com/3RrM0a4M2n

— Nat Friedman (@natfriedman) May 5, 2025

Philodemus, a 1st-century BC philosopher and poet, was instrumental in transmitting Epicurean thought to the Roman world. He studied under the Epicurean philosopher, Zeno of Sidon, the head of the Epicurean school, in Athens, before settling in Rome about 80 BC.

His writings, long buried and carbonized in the Villa of the Papyri, offer invaluable insight into Hellenistic philosophy and ethics. The scroll, one of three housed at Oxford’s Bodleian Libraries, had remained unreadable until the recent breakthrough.

“It’s the first scroll where the ink could just be seen on the scan,” Dr. Michael McOsker, a papyrologist at University College London working with Oxford researchers, told The Guardian. “Nobody knew what it was about. We didn’t even know if it had writing on it.”

Experts are deciphering yet another scroll by philosopher Philodemus from the eruption of #Vesuvius on 24 Oct 79 AD. Artificial intelligence & X-ray tomography offer hope for those hopelessly charred papyrus scrolls found at #Herculaneum's #VilladeiPapiri. They unroll their… pic.twitter.com/jttkk6xso3

— Antinous the Gay God (@antinousgaygod) March 24, 2025

…

The latest work builds on earlier breakthroughs from the Vesuvius Challenge, a global competition launched in 2023, which offers prizes for progress in reading the scrolls from 3D X-rays. Last year, a team of computer-savvy students shared the $700,000 (£527,350) grand prize for developing artificial intelligence software that enabled them to read 2,000 ancient Greek letters from another scroll.

The scroll from the Bodleian, named PHerc. 172, was scanned last July at Diamond, the UK’s national synchrotron facility in Oxfordshire. Unusually, some ink was visible in the X-ray images, with researchers spotting the ancient Greek word for “disgust” at least twice in the document.

Further work by Sean Johnson at the Vesuvius Challenge, and separately by Marcel Roth and Micha Nowak at the University of Würzburg, found the title and author of the text in the innermost section of the scroll, earning them the challenge’s $60,000 (£45,200) first title prize.

Alongside “On Vices” and “Philodemus,” a book number on the scroll may be an alpha, suggesting it could be the first instalment of the work. On Vices contains at least 10 books with others covering topics such as arrogance, greed, flattery and household management.

Developments in AI are moving ahead so rapidly that, whereas two or three years ago, most humanities faculty members forbid their students to use AI tools in the writing of their papers, it has now reached the point that many departments and colleagues are requiring that students demonstrate the use of AI in the writing of their papers.

Selected readings

• ytš ḥṭ ḏ lqml śʿ[r w]zqt" (11/10/22)
• "Canaanite in the news again" (2/2/23)
• "Decipherment of Linear A" (5/24/23)
• "The Origin(s) of Writing" (3/19/22) — Phaistos disc; Linear A / B
• "Whence cometh linguistic meaning?" (6/14/18) — Rosetta stone; Phaistos Disc; Linear A; Indus Valley script
• "Toward the decipherment of Harappan" (2/14/22)
• "Decipherment of Linear Elamite" (9/5/22)
• "Solving Linear A" (11/29/19)
• "Minoan language Linear A linked to Linear B in new research" (5/15/22)
• "Translation as cryptography as translation" (11/19/12)
• "Hype over AI and Classical Chinese / Literary Sinitic" (11/9/23)
• "Digitization of Babylonian fragments" (2/12/23)
• "Decipherment of the Indus script: new angles and approaches" (3/6/25)
• "AI for reconstructing degraded Latin text" (8/9/25)

[Thanks to John Tkacik]

October 15, 2025 @ 4:43 pm · Filed by Victor Mair under Artificial intelligence, Decipherment, Language and philosophy

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