The papyrus was inked by Philodemus of Gadara, a Herculaneum-based poet and philosopher.
Artificial intelligence is helping researchers digitally unravel the scrolls, which are generally too fragile to physically open.
Early attempts to unwrap the scrollsfound by a farmworker in 1750caused their destruction.
A carbonized papyrus scroll being imaged.Photo: Italian National Research Council
The contents of those scrolls, unfortunately, are lost to time.
Virtual unwrapping is happening elsewhere, too.
Previous digital unravelling of the Herculaneum scrolls used neural networks to identify the presence of ink in the scrolls.
Plato, as imaged in Raphael’s ‘’The School of Athens.’Illustration:Raphael
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Top to bottom: A reference photograph of delta symbols, an integral texture image, and a network-generated carbon ink prediction image.Image:Parker et al., PLOS One 2019
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