AI and imaging reveal complete Herculaneum scroll text

For the first time, researchers have successfully read the complete text of a sealed Herculaneum scroll without physically opening it, using artificial intelligence and advanced imaging to recover a philosophical work that survived the eruption of Mount Vesuvius nearly 2,000 years ago. The breakthrough, announced at a conference in Naples on Thursday, June 25, 2026, marks a pivotal moment in the effort to unlock the only surviving library from the ancient Greco-Roman world.

The scrolls, carbonized by the intense heat of the volcanic eruption in A.D. 79, were discovered in a Roman villa in Herculaneum in 1752. They have long been considered too fragile to unroll, as any physical attempt would destroy the charred papyrus. Instead, an international project called the Vesuvius Challenge has employed high-resolution X-ray scans and particle accelerators to create detailed 3D images of the manuscripts. Researchers then used machine-learning algorithms to digitally "unwrap" the scrolls and detect traces of ink invisible to the human eye.

This latest effort recovered approximately 1.5 meters (5 feet) of text across 20 to 22 columns from a scroll fragment only 2 centimeters wide. The...