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The burial spot was found in one of the Herculaneum scrolls charred by Mt. Vesuvius. Greek philosopher Plato played a huge role in shaping Western thought, particularly around politics, and even though he died more than 2,300 years ago, his “Republic” is still one of the most studied books at top US colleges. Despite Plato’s wide and lasting influence, though, there’s still a lot we don’t know about him, including his final resting place. Historians had been able to narrow it down to the garden of the school he founded in Athens, but where exactly in the expansive gardens was...

Newly deciphered passages from a papyrus scroll that was buried beneath layers of volcanic ash after the AD79 eruption of Mount Vesuvius may have shed light on the final hours of Plato, a key figure in the history of western philosophy. In a groundbreaking discovery, the ancient scroll was found to contain a previously unknown narrative detailing how the Greek philosopher spent his last evening, describing how he listened to music played on a flute by a Thracian slave girl. Despite battling a fever and being on the brink of death, Plato – who was known as a disciple of...

The papyrus had been buried under metres of ash at the house, believed to have belonged to Julius Caesar’s father-in-law, after Vesuvius erupted in AD79 and scholars have spent the last 250 years painstakingly trying to find a way to read its contents, The Times reports. Now Professor Graziano Ranocchia of the University of Pisa and his colleagues have used techniques, including shortwave infrared hyperspectral imaging, which picks up variations in the way light bounces off the black ink on the papyrus, to decipher the document. Professor Ranocchia described the scroll as 'the oldest history of Greek philosophy in our...

A £560,000 prize was on offer for scholars who could read the ancient Roman texts buried when Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79AD. Scrolls cocooned in volcanic ash that consumed the Roman city of Pompeii have been deciphered for the first time in 2,000 years. Using AI researchers were able to discern some meaning from the writings which were discovered in the doomed ancient Italian city that was destroyed by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79AD. ...In a statement the Vesuvius Challenge revealed some of the information hidden until now in the scrolls which appear to be philosophical treatises concerning...

Greek writing inside a 2,000-year-old scroll burned during the 79 CE eruption of Mount Vesuvius has been deciphered by a team of student researchers. This latest development may lead not only to the discovery of a previously illegible text, but also pave the way for new applications of artificial intelligence to the archaeological field. The scroll hails from the luxury Roman villa Herculaneum and is one of more than 1,800 intact papyri turned carbonized ash, known as the Herculaneum scrolls, excavated in the 18th century. The scrolls that have previously been read relate to the Athenian philosophy of Epicurus who...

The famous Herculaneum scroll, charred papyrus found buried by the Mount Vesuvius eruption in 79AD, has been deciphered by artificial intelligence.The feat was achieved by students in the Vesuvius challenge, which used algorithms to scan the artifact that would otherwise had been destroyed if unraveled by human hands.The winning team read more than 2,000 'never-before-seen' texts that discussed sources of pleasure, such as music, the taste of capers and the color purple.The three students, from Egypt, Switzerland and the US, share a $700,000 grand prize for uncovering hundreds of words across more than 15 columns of text, corresponding to around...

Twenty years ago, Brigham Young University engineers and classical scholars pioneered the use of multispectral imaging technologies to read ancient documents, including the charred and fragile Herculaneum papyri. In the case of the Herculaneum papyri, which were carbonized and buried by the same eruption that destroyed the ancient city of Pompeii in AD 79, the BYU team had miraculous results. Black ink on blackened pages of papyri suddenly became readable, to the amazement of scholars. The BYU images would lead to dozens of new publications and forever changed the world of papyrology.Out of the Ashes: Recovering the Lost Library of...

Hear from experts about the challenges of unraveling and reading hundreds of carbonized papyri scrolls buried by the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in AD 79. Classicists David Blank of the University of California Los Angeles and Richard Janko of the University of Michigan discuss early and current attempts to open the fragile layers and decipher their texts, and computer scientist W. Brent Seales of the University of Kentucky shares how advances in technology and machine learning might allow the still unopened ancient book rolls to be "virtually unwrapped" and read. October 19, 2019, The Getty Villa, Malibu, California.Reading the Herculaneum...

'The British Museum's 2013 show of artefacts from the Roman cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum, buried in ash during an explosive eruption of Mount Vesuvius, was a sell-out. But could even greater treasures - including lost works of classical literature - still lie underground?.'

Researchers used artificial intelligence to extract the first word from one of the first texts in a charred scroll from the ancient Roman city of Herculaneum, which has been unreadable since a volcanic eruption in AD 79 — the same one that buried nearby Pompeii...The Vesuvius Challenge, a contest with $1,000,000 (£821K) in prizes for those who can use modern technology to decipher the words of these scrolls, has awarded a 21-year-old undergraduate student at the University of Nebraska $40,000 (£32.8K) for being the first to read a word from one of the ancient Herculaneum scrolls.Luke Farritor, who is at...

A pair of 2,000-year-old Roman scrolls believed to have belonged to the family of Julius Caesar, and were buried and charred during Vesuvius’ eruption, have been virtually “unwrapped” for the first time ever. The scrolls, known as the Herculaneum Scrolls, are too fragile to be handled by hand, so researchers needed to use the X-ray beam at Diamond Light Source, as well as a “virtual unwrapping” software to detect the carbon ink on them. “Texts from the ancient world are rare and precious, and they simply cannot be revealed through any other known process,” University of Kentucky professor Brent Seales,...

The remains of the oldest public library in Germany, a building erected almost two millennia ago that may have housed up to 20,000 scrolls, have been discovered in the middle of Cologne. The walls were first uncovered in 2017, during an excavation on the grounds of a Protestant church in the centre of the city. Archaeologists knew they were of Roman origins, with Cologne being one of Germany's oldest cities, founded by the Romans in 50 AD under the name Colonia. But the discovery of niches in the walls, measuring approximately 80cm by 50cm, was, initially, mystifying... "But what they...

Analysis of Herculaneum papyrus scroll fragments reveals the use of metallic ink in Greco-Roman literary inscription centuries earlier than previously thought, according to a study*. Scholars of ancient scrolls hold that texts from antiquity, particularly Greek and Latin literary manuscripts produced until the fourth century AD, were largely written in carbon-based ink on papyri, the fibrous structure of which allowed scribes to jettison ruling lines. Vito Mocella and colleagues used nondestructive synchrotron X-ray-based methods to chemically analyze the barely visible black inscriptions on two nearly flat, multilayered papyrus fragments that were found at the Villa dei Papiri at Herculaneum in...

For centuries scholars have been hunting for the lost works of ancient Greek and Latin literature. In the Renaissance, books were found in monastic libraries. In the late 19th Century papyrus scrolls were found in the sands of Egypt. But only in Herculaneum in southern Italy has an entire library from the ancient Mediterranean been discovered in situ. On the eve of the catastrophe in 79 AD, Herculaneum was a chic resort town on the Bay of Naples, where many of Rome's top families went to rest and recuperate during the hot Italian summers. It was also a place where...

On Aug. 24, 79 A.D., Italy's Mount Vesuvius exploded, burying the Roman towns of Herculaneum and Pompeii under tons of super-heated ash, rock and debris in one of the most famous volcanic eruptions in history. Thousands died. But somehow, hundreds of papyrus scrolls survived -- sort of -- in a villa at Herculaneum thought to have been owned at one time by Julius Caesar's father-in-law. The scrolls contained ancient philosophical and learned writings. But they were so badly damaged -- literally turned to carbon by the volcanic heat -- that they crumbled when scholars first tried to open them centuries...

For the first time, words have been read from a burnt, rolled-up scroll buried by Mount Vesuvius in AD79. The scrolls of Herculaneum, the only classical library still in existence, were blasted by volcanic gas hotter than 300C and are desperately fragile. Deep inside one scroll, physicists distinguished the ink from the paper using a 3D X-ray imaging technique sometimes used in breast scans. They believe that other scrolls could also be deciphered without unrolling.

The unique library of the Villa of the Papyri in Herculaneum, buried beneath lava by Vesuvius's eruption in AD79, is slowly revealing its long-held secretsSTORED in a sky-lit reading room on the top floor of the Biblioteca Nazionale in Naples are the charred remains of the only library to survive from classical antiquity. The ancient world's other great book collections -- at Athens, Alexandria and Rome -- all perished in the chaos of the centuries. But the library of the Villa of the Papyri was conserved, paradoxically, by an act of destruction. Lying to the northwest of ancient Herculaneum, this...

The unique library of the Villa of the Papyri in Herculaneum, buried beneath lava by Vesuvius's eruption in AD79, is slowly revealing its long-held secretsSTORED in a sky-lit reading room on the top floor of the Biblioteca Nazionale in Naples are the charred remains of the only library to survive from classical antiquity. The ancient world's other great book collections -- at Athens, Alexandria and Rome -- all perished in the chaos of the centuries. But the library of the Villa of the Papyri was conserved, paradoxically, by an act of destruction. Lying to the northwest of ancient Herculaneum, this...

The director of MRI and radiology at Kadlec Medicl Center watched a TV documentary years ago about efforts to read the ancient scrolls and the story stuck with him. This week, Iuliano is using his expertise to scan fragments of the charred scrolls in hopes of discovering what they say... The papyrus scrolls were discovered more than 200 years ago in a villa in what was the Roman town of Herculaneum. The town was buried along with the more famous city of Pompeii when Vesuvius erupted. The scrolls make up the only surviving library from antiquity, Iuliano said. Scholars have...

ROME (Reuters) - An ancient Roman wood and ivory throne has been unearthed at a dig in Herculaneum, Italian archaeologists said on Tuesday, hailing it as the most significant piece of wooden furniture ever discovered there. The throne was found during an excavation in the Villa of the Papyri, the private house formerly belonging to Julius Caesar's father-in-law, Lucius Calpurnius Piso Caesoninus, built on the slope of Mount Vesuvius. The name of the villa derives from the impressive library containing thousands of scrolls of papyrus discovered buried under meters (yards) of volcanic ash after the Vesuvius erupted on 24 August...