- Joined
- Sep 15, 2021
I'm leaving this here for posterity and to raise awareness to other kiwis into AI and LLMs in hopes of people with far more beefy PC rigs than me can reveal a lot of new history.
https://scrollprize.org/community_projects
When Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 AD Pompei and Herculaneum was famously buried in ash and only rediscovered 100s of years later. Specifically in 1750, an Italian farmer discovered the foundation of massive villa complex outside Herculaneum known as the Villa of the Papyri for having 100s of preserved scrolls across ruined cabinets, shelving and rooms. The problem was that these scrolls were completely unreadable since the heat of eruption instantly carbonised them into charcoal. Many scrolls were broken apart in pieces in the early archaeologist days and the Catholic Church tried in vain to pry them open to examine. The most successful attempts involved suspending scrolls weighed down by minute weights over decades to slowly separate the scrolls and even then the indentation is often so faded amid the papyrus layers that the human eye couldn't perceive any legible words. The scrolls were placed into storage since and the villa of Lucius Calpurnius Piso, the father-in-law of Julius Caesar was soon scoured for any more substantial relics of which elaborate statues, mosaics, jewelry and more were able to be recovered however the potentially 1000s of scrolls in his private library remains a total mystery to us.
From the project on the history of the site and previous efforts:
It's all for grabs for anyone to contribute and over $800,000 of prize money has already been given as BRAND NEW manuscripts of Philodemus , the epicurean philosopher has been translated.
https://github.com/younader/Vesuvius-Grandprize-Winner / https://scrollprize.org/grandprize
Text from PHerc.Paris. 4 (Institut de France), unseen for 2,000 years. Roughly 95% of the scroll remains to be read.
All previous livestreams from the initiative on progress and 2023 + 2024 prize winners interviews.
https://scrollprize.org/community_projects
When Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 AD Pompei and Herculaneum was famously buried in ash and only rediscovered 100s of years later. Specifically in 1750, an Italian farmer discovered the foundation of massive villa complex outside Herculaneum known as the Villa of the Papyri for having 100s of preserved scrolls across ruined cabinets, shelving and rooms. The problem was that these scrolls were completely unreadable since the heat of eruption instantly carbonised them into charcoal. Many scrolls were broken apart in pieces in the early archaeologist days and the Catholic Church tried in vain to pry them open to examine. The most successful attempts involved suspending scrolls weighed down by minute weights over decades to slowly separate the scrolls and even then the indentation is often so faded amid the papyrus layers that the human eye couldn't perceive any legible words. The scrolls were placed into storage since and the villa of Lucius Calpurnius Piso, the father-in-law of Julius Caesar was soon scoured for any more substantial relics of which elaborate statues, mosaics, jewelry and more were able to be recovered however the potentially 1000s of scrolls in his private library remains a total mystery to us.
From the project on the history of the site and previous efforts:
History
Guest post by Dr. Garrett Ryan
Our understanding of the ancient Greeks and Romans is based on texts. Although we have other sources of information about the classical world, it is through texts – literary works originally written on papyrus scrolls — that we have received the ideas on which western civilization was founded.
Since 99% of these texts were lost during the Middle Ages, almost everything we know about Greek and Roman literature is based on the tiny selection of ancient works preserved by medieval copyists.
The Villa of the Papyri at Herculaneum could change that.
The Villa of the Papyri
Herculaneum was a Roman town on the Bay of Naples that was buried, along with the neighboring city of Pompeii, by the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD. After its accidental rediscovery in 1709, Herculaneum was explored by teams of workmen who drove tunnels through the rock-hard volcanic debris blanketing the ruins.
Herculaneum getting buried in pyroclastic material (source)
In 1750, a tunnel reached the enormous seaside mansion now known as the Villa of the Papyri. Dozens of bronze and marble statues were found inside, testifying to the wealth and taste of the man who likely built the mansion: Lucius Calpurnius Piso, the father-in-law of Julius Caesar. The villa’s true treasures, however, only came to light after two years of tunneling, when diggers began to encounter lumps of what appeared to be charcoal. It was gradually realized that these were papyrus scrolls, carbonized by the heat of the eruption.
Some scrolls were discovered in the charred remains of a cabinet, and others in three carrying-cases. The vast majority, however, were found in a small room lined with wooden shelves. Over the course of two years, about 1,000 scrolls, many in pieces, were recovered from the villa.
The Getty Villa in California, a reproduction of the Villa of the Papyri (source)
Reading (and destroying) scrolls
Initial attempts to open the scrolls involved chopping them in half lengthwise and peeling back layers from the inside. After a few years of such butchery, the scrolls were entrusted to Antonio Piaggio, a scholar from the Vatican Library who devised an ingenious machine to unroll the scrolls using weights on strings.
Piaggio’s unrolling machine (sourcehttps://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Abbot-Piaggio-machine-Herculaneum-papyri.jpg
Piaggio’s machine was used, with varying degrees of success, to open hundreds of the best-preserved scrolls. Other papyri were doused in chemicals, blasted with gasses, sliced, diced, and pulverized in various attempts to read them. The small fragments used for ground truth data in this competition were probably detached during one of these destructive experiments.
Scroll fragments (source)
Undoing the Dark Ages
The small room in which most of the scrolls were found seems to have been the working library of Philodemus of Gadara, an Epicurean philosopher who lived a century before the eruption of Vesuvius. Unsurprisingly, most of the papyri found there were works of philosophy, many written by Philodemus himself. If read, the hundreds of unopened scrolls waiting in Naples would transform our knowledge of ancient philosophy.
The scrolls we have now may be just the beginning. When part of the Villa of the Papyri was cleared in the 1990s, archaeologists realized that the building was much larger than previously thought, with two unexcavated levels. At the very least, these floors likely contain more papyri in cabinets and carrying cases. And it’s probable that they conceal a far greater treasure.
The full size of the villa, with potentially a much bigger library; drawn by Rocío Espín (source)
We have not yet found the villa’s main library, which would have contained a much wider range of Greek and Latin literature. That library, with its thousands or even tens of thousands of scrolls, must still be buried. If those texts are discovered, and if even a small fraction can still be read, they will transform our knowledge of classical life and literature on a scale not seen since the Renaissance.
A New Chapter
In 2023, the Vesuvius Challenge added to this story by recovering text from one of the still-rolled Herculaneum scrolls. In 2024, we want to get from reading 5% of one scroll to 90% of four scrolls. Join us!
15 columns of text from PHerc. Paris. 4 (Scroll 1). Read more in the 2023 Grand Prize announcement.
2015 AD
Dr. Brent Seales pioneers virtual unwrapping.
Using X-ray tomography and computer vision, a team led by Dr. Brent Seales at the University of Kentucky reads the En-Gedi scroll without opening it. Discovered in the Dead Sea region of Israel, the scroll is found to contain text from the book of Leviticus.
Virtual unwrapping has since emerged as a growing field with multiple successes. Their work went on to show the elusive carbon ink of the Herculaneum scrolls can also be detected using X-ray tomography, laying the foundation for the Vesuvius Challenge.
2015 AD
Dr. Brent Seales pioneers virtual unwrapping.
Using X-ray tomography and computer vision, a team led by Dr. Brent Seales at the University of Kentucky reads the En-Gedi scroll without opening it. Discovered in the Dead Sea region of Israel, the scroll is found to contain text from the book of Leviticus.
Virtual unwrapping has since emerged as a growing field with multiple successes. Their work went on to show the elusive carbon ink of the Herculaneum scrolls can also be detected using X-ray tomography, laying the foundation for the Vesuvius Challenge.
2023 AD
A remarkable breakthrough.
The Vesuvius Challenge was launched in March 2023 to bring the world together to read the Herculaneum scrolls. Along with smaller progress prizes, a Grand Prize was issued for the first team to recover 4 passages of 140 characters from a Herculaneum scroll.
Following a year of progress, the prize was claimed. After 275 years, the ancient puzzle of the Herculaneum Papyri has been cracked open. But the quest to uncover the secrets of the scrolls is just ongoing.
From the project:
The Data
To download: Fill out the registration form and then visit the data server (LICENSE).
To learn more about the data, see the linked pages below. Also be sure to check out:
- EduceLab-Scrolls (2019): technical paper describing the original data.
- EduceLab Data Sheet (2023): technical paper describing more recent scans added to the dataset.
- Tutorials: what to do with the data.
- Our libraries to access data in 1-2 lines of code: in Python (with intro notebook) and in C!
Scrolls
Micro-CT scans of intact Herculaneum scrolls. The mission is to virtually unwrap the contents of the scrolls from the CT scans, revealing the text hidden within. Scroll 1 was used to win the 2023 Grand Prize, but 95% of the scroll remains unread!
More information
Fragments
Micro-CT scans of detached scroll fragments. Since the fragments have exposed text on their surfaces, they can be used as ground truth for machine learning-based ink detection approaches (see Tutorial 5: Ink Detection).
More information
Segments
Segmentation is the mapping of sheets of papyrus in a 3D X-ray volume. The resulting surface volumes can be used directly to look for ink.
More information
It's all for grabs for anyone to contribute and over $800,000 of prize money has already been given as BRAND NEW manuscripts of Philodemus , the epicurean philosopher has been translated.
https://github.com/younader/Vesuvius-Grandprize-Winner / https://scrollprize.org/grandprize
Text from PHerc.Paris. 4 (Institut de France), unseen for 2,000 years. Roughly 95% of the scroll remains to be read.
All previous livestreams from the initiative on progress and 2023 + 2024 prize winners interviews.
