If you can read a manuscript burned during the eruption of Vesuvius, scientists are offering a $250,000 reward!

Scientists are offering a $250,000 (£205,000) reward to anyone who can read a 2,000-year-old series of manuscripts burned during the eruption of Mount Vesuvius.

When a volcanic eruption swept through Pompeii in 79 AD, hundreds of texts in the Library of Herculaneum were buried and burned by ash and gases.

It reappeared in 1752 in a villa near the Bay of Naples believed to have belonged to Julius Caesar’s family, but its contents remained a mystery because scientists thought it was too fragile to identify.

A research team has now launched a competition after demonstrating that an artificial intelligence system can extract letters and symbols from high-resolution X-ray images of documents.

This machine learning algorithm is trained to read ink on the surface and in the hidden layers of unopened rolls.
Lead researcher Professor Brent Seals, a computer scientist at the University of Kentucky, told the Guardian: “We’ve shown you how to read Herculaneum ink. To us.”

The researchers are releasing software they use to help others decipher the documents, including thousands of 3D X-ray images of two pieces of parchment and three papyri.

They hope that research teams from around the world will help develop their AI programs and achieve their goals.

“We have competition so we can improve our ability to extract more text,” added Sales.

Each research team will compete for a $150,000 (£123,000) prize.

This prize will be awarded to the first person to read four passages of text from the inner layers of the scrolls before the end of this year.

Other prizes of $100,000 (£80,000) will be awarded to those who can detect the ink on the rolls from the 3D X-ray scan.

The two papyri were among hundreds of scrolls found in the 1750s.

The black ink used to write them is not visible, but when viewed in infrared Greek letters and symbols are visible, some of which have been deciphered by artificial intelligence software. Most of the Herculaneum manuscripts examined so far are written in ancient Greek, although researchers believe that some may also contain Latin texts.

Doctoral candidate Stephen Parsons, who was part of the research team, said improvements in technology could help academics better understand the manuscripts.

Source: Daily Mail