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Researchers reveal first full passages decoded from a scroll from Herculaneum.

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gallienus1:
Just saw this on CNN about progress using scanner technology and AI to start reading a scroll from Herculaneum. According to the journalist Taylor Nicioli-

In the deciphered text, Philodemus writes on “pleasure,” and whether the abundance of goods available can affect the amount of pleasure they give. “As too in the case of food, we do not right away believe things that are scarce to be absolutely more pleasant than those which are abundant,” the first sentence reads.

See-

https://edition.cnn.com/2024/02/07/world/herculaneum-scroll-passages-decoded-philodemus-vesuvius-scn/index.html

Heliodromus:
There's some more reporting here that goes into a bit of details of the technique used.

Basically (but doing zero justice to the years of research to get to this point):

- CT scan the charred roll to get a 3-D image of every spatial location within the roll
- Virtually unroll it by following the inter-layer boundaries from one cross-sectional slice to another (much easier said than done)
- Look for irregularities on the unrolled layers that they've learnt correspond to the presence of ink, using machine learning to detect these and decipher them into letters

https://www.dw.com/en/ai-helps-scientists-read-unreadable-herculaneum-scrolls/a-68193293

If you look at what they are working with, this is science on the edge of witchcraft to be able to read text from the inner layers of something like this!

SC:
I love how the first thing deciphered is a piece of wisdom that still applies to modern culture......

SC

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