This time the IA, which plays a role of “automatic amnuensi”, found the Greek word “disgust” in the papyri of Herculaneum.
They were sealed for almost two thousand years, charred by the Fury of Vesuvius in 79 AD, fragile to the point of dusting into a minimum attempt at the opening. In recent years, however, thanks to artificial intelligence, some of the rolls of Herculaneum are gradually revealing their content.
After revealing where Plato was buried, today artificial intelligence detects in the manuscript, known as Pherc. 172preserved at the Bodleian Library by Oxford, there Greek word “διατροπή” (“diatropé”), which can mean “disgust” or “confusion”now it will be the tasks of the historical contextualize this term.
Manuscript invioiled. To decipher the papyri, advanced imaging techniques have been used and a combination of X -ray scan and artificial intelligence. The first step was that of Rebuilding the structure of the roll in 3Dthanks to a synchrotron, a car that generates bundles of X -rays to very high energy. Crossing the charred papyrusthese bundles have produced thousands of two -dimensional images taken from different angles. These images were then processed on the computer and combined with each other to obtain a three -dimensional digital model of the roll, so from to be able to “unroll” it virtually without compromising its integrity.
The role of the AI. Thanks to this process, it was possible to detect the traces of ink, invisible to the naked eye, on the burnt papyrus. To do this, scientists have relied on Automatic learning algorithms, trained to distinguish the letters from the charred support. We then moved on to the use of a technique known as “hyperspectral imaging”, which uses infrared light to highlight the contrast between the coal -based ink and the burnt material. Already used to recover canceled medieval texts, this technology has proven particularly effective with the fragile papyri of Herculaneum. In the end, Artificial intelligence played the role of automatic amanuensis: without understanding the text, has simply detected the graphic symbols and returned them to the screenleaving scholars the task of interpreting them.
The challenge continues. The work on Pherc. 172 It is part of the Vesuvius Challenge, an initiative that rewards with important sums of money the developers capable of Improve Rotoli reading techniques (In 2023, for example, three students won 850,000 dollars managing to decipher over $ 2,000 Greek letters from another manuscript preserved in the Institut de France in Paris).
Philosophical texts. One of the first words identified in the papyrus of Herculaneum is “διατροπή” (“diatropé”), which can mean “confusion” or “disgust”, and others still in the interpretation phase, while it is assumed that the Text could belong to the epicurean philosopher Filodemo in Gadara (110-35 BC
), whose library represents one of the most precious testimonies of ancient thought. If this hypothesis was confirmed, the deciphering of the rolls could shed light on aspects still little explored of the Hellenistic philosophyrevealing ideas and concepts remained buried for millennia.
A buried treasure. The material collected in Ercolano comes from a villa believed to belong to Lucio Calpurnio Pisone, a father -in -law of Julius Caesar. Discovered in the eighteenth century, many were destroyed in an attempt to open them and, to date, it is estimated that approximately 1,800 manuscripts still remain wrapped in their carbon turns.
Thanks to the AI, these documents could finally tell stories and ideas that time had buried under the ash of Vesuvius and their analysis could reveal unpublished details on unknown authors, on forgotten historical events and on aspects of everyday life in the first century AD, opening an extraordinary window on the events of the past.
