{"slug": "why-researchers-made-their-own-model-herculaneum-scrolls", "title": "Why researchers made their own model Herculaneum scrolls", "summary": "A team of researchers created their own contemporary model papyrus scrolls, charring them like the originals, to validate a screening method for determining which of the roughly 600 Herculaneum scrolls were written in lead-based ink and are therefore the most promising candidates for further analysis, according to a new paper published in the journal PLoS ONE. The work supports the Vesuvius Challenge, an ongoing project that combines digital unwrapping with crowdsourced machine learning to decipher the 2,000-year-old charred papyri, which were excavated in the 1700s from a room believed to hold the library of the Epicurean philosopher Philodemus. Brent Searles' lab at the University of Kentucky has worked on virtually unrolling such damaged scrolls for years, a method he used in 2016 to open the En Gedi scroll and reveal the first few verses from the book of Leviticus.", "body_md": "The [Vesuvius Challenge](https://scrollprize.org) is an ongoing project that combines “digital unwrapping” with crowdsourced machine learning to decipher the so-called Herculaneum scrolls, badly charred 2,000-year-old papyri too fragile to be physically unrolled. The effort just got an additional boost. A team of researchers created their own contemporary model papyrus scrolls—charring them just like the originals—to validate a screening method to determine which of the Herculaneum scrolls were written in lead-based ink, and hence are the most promising candidates for further analysis. They described the process in a new paper published in the journal PLoS ONE.\n\nAs [previously reported](https://arstechnica.com/science/2016/03/researchers-use-synchrotron-to-read-ancient-burned-scrolls-from-rome/), the ancient Roman resort town of Pompeii wasn’t the only city destroyed in [the catastrophic 79 AD eruption of Mount Vesuvius](http://io9.gizmodo.com/5825459/the-roman-city-of-pompeii-pictures-of-a-lost-world-frozen-in-time). Several other cities in the area, including the wealthy enclave of Herculaneum, were fried by clouds of hot gas, called pyroclastic pulses and flows. But still, some remnants of Roman wealth survived. One palatial residence in Herculaneum—believed to have once belonged to a man named Piso—contained hundreds of priceless written scrolls made from papyrus, singed into carbon by volcanic gas.\n\nThe scrolls stayed buried under volcanic mud until they were excavated in the 1700s from a single room that archaeologists believe held the personal working library of an Epicurean philosopher named Philodemus. The few opened fragments helped scholars identify a variety of Greek philosophical texts, including *On Nature* by Epicurus and several by Philodemus himself, as well as a handful of Latin works. But the more than 600 rolled-up scrolls were so fragile that it was long believed they would never be readable, since even touching them could cause them to crumble.\n\nBrent Searles’ lab at the University of Kentucky has been working on deciphering the Herculaneum scrolls for many years. He employs a [different method](https://gizmodo.com/wondergadget-allows-researchers-to-read-a-charred-bibli-1786824739) of “virtually unrolling” damaged scrolls, which he used in 2016 to “open” a scroll found on the western shore of the Dead Sea, revealing the first few verses from the book of Leviticus. The so-called [En Gedi scroll](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/En-Gedi_Scroll) was recovered from the ark of an ancient synagogue destroyed by fire around 600 CE. To the naked eye, it resembled a small lump of charcoal, so fragile that there was no safe way to analyze the contents.", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/why-researchers-made-their-own-model-herculaneum-scrolls", "canonical_source": "https://arstechnica.com/science/2026/09/why-researchers-made-their-own-model-herculaneum-scrolls/", "published_at": "2026-09-16 18:43:23+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-09-16 18:45:26.544605+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["machine-learning", "computer-vision", "ai-research"], "entities": ["Vesuvius Challenge", "Herculaneum scrolls", "PLoS ONE", "Brent Searles", "University of Kentucky", "En Gedi scroll", "Philodemus", "Mount Vesuvius"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/why-researchers-made-their-own-model-herculaneum-scrolls", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/why-researchers-made-their-own-model-herculaneum-scrolls.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/why-researchers-made-their-own-model-herculaneum-scrolls.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/why-researchers-made-their-own-model-herculaneum-scrolls.jsonld"}}