| An entire Herculaneum scroll has been read for the first time(scrollprize.org) | |
| 1342 points by verditelabs 19 hours ago | 283 comments | |
tl;dr: Researchers have virtually unwrapped and read PHerc. 1667 in full — the first Herculaneum scroll read end-to-end without physical unrolling — using high-resolution phase-contrast X-ray microtomography at the ESRF combined with machine learning to detect faint ink traces. The recovered text appears to be a 2nd-century BC Stoic philosophical treatise on ethics, naming Aristocreon (disciple of Chrysippus). Two other scrolls yielded results too: independent confirmation of the 2023 Grand Prize reading via direct 3D ink detection, and identification of PHerc. 139 as Philodemus' On Gods, Book 8. All data and code are openly released. | |
HN Discussion:
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