The great libraries of the ancient classical world were “legendary…and said to have housed vast quantities of documents,” the authors write. science alert. However, he is the only one whose collection remains to this day, from Rome to Constantinople, from Athens to Alexandria.
And here in 2024, “you can start reading it.”
A world-wide competition to decipher the charred inscriptions on the Villa Papyri, an ancient Roman mansion destroyed by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius, reveals a timeless enthusiasm for the joys of music, the color purple and, of course, the tingly taste. became. capers. The so-called Vesuvius Challenge was started a few years ago by Brent Shields, a computer scientist at the University of Kentucky, with support from Silicon Valley investors. The ongoing “master plan” builds on Shields' previous research to examine all of the 1,800 or so charred papyri in ancient Roman libraries, starting with scrolls labeled 1 through 4. It's about reading.
In 2023, the annual gold award was awarded to a team of three students who recovered four sentences containing 140 characters. This is the longest extraction ever. The winners are Yusef Nader, Luke Faritor and Julian Siliger. “After 275 years, the ancient mystery of the Herculaneum Papyrus has been solved,” says the Vesuvius Challenge Scroll Prize website. “But the quest to uncover the Scroll's secrets has only just begun…” Only now, with the advent of X-ray tomography and machine learning, will their inky words be pulled out of the carbon darkness.
A few months ago, students deciphered the single word “purple,” according to the article. But “that winning code was then available for all competitors to build on.”
Within three months, as if by magic, Latin and Greek passages began to bloom from the darkness. The teams with the most readable posts at the end of 2023 included both teams who had previously discovered the word “purple.” Scroll 1 they unfold is truly impressive, containing over 11 columns of text. Experts are now rushing to translate the findings. So far, about 5 percent of the scroll has been unfolded and read. Vesuvius Challenge researchers say this is not a copy of previous work, but an “ancient document unlike anything we have seen before.”
One line reads: “In the case of food, we are not quick to believe that something in scarcity is absolutely more enjoyable than something in abundance.”
Thanks to davidone (Slashdot reader #12,252) for sharing the article.