Uncovering ancient text from the Oxford Herculaneum scroll

In July 2024, Diamond's powerful light enabled a team from the nearby Bodleian Libraries to scan a 2,000-year-old Herculaneum scroll. The scroll, one of three housed at the libraries, was studied on the I12 beamline and the collected X-ray data has played a crucial role in deciphering the text of this ancient artifact.

By scanning the scroll, researchers were able to generate an image of the inside of scroll Pherc. 172, which was buried by the Mount Vesuvius eruption in 79AD. The papyrus texts were flashed seared by the volcanic heat and are thought to be part of the only remaining intact library from the ancient world.

The scroll was buried and carbonized during the eruption, and previous attempts to open similar scrolls have been largely disastrous. But by using the unique capabilities of Diamond's beamline, as well as a machine learning program (AI), researchers have been able to create an "un-rolled" image of the carbonized layers.

The Oxford scroll is unique due to the chemical composition of its ink, which appears more clearly in Diamond's X-ray scans. It may be that this scroll's ink contains a denser contaminant, such as lead, that makes its text more legible than other Herculaneum scrolls.

The image was made possible by the advanced scanning capabilities of the I12 beamline, a high energy X-ray beamline for imaging, diffraction and scattering, which operates at photon energies of 53–150 keV.

The scanning and deciphering of the text is part of the Vesuvius Challenge, a global machine learning competition that hopes to recover the contents of the scrolls that were discovered in the 1750s. The majority of the scrolls reside at the Biblioteca Nazionale di Napoli, although several were gifted to the Bodleian Libraries at Oxford University, the British Library and the Insitut de France.

This is not the first time that Diamond has played host to one of these ancient scrolls. In 2019, Professor Brent Seales, who co-founded the Vesuvius Challenge, brought two scrolls and several fragments from the Institut de France. By using Diamond's scans, along with the pioneering AI software platform his team developed, thousands of characters making up 5% of the scroll, were identified.

The Oxford scroll has already revealed its first word—the Ancient Greek διατροπή meaning "disgust," which appears twice within a few columns of text. Researchers are refining the image using a new segmentation technique, hoping to see the innermost text of the papyrus scroll which could include a title and description.

The team from the University of Oxford are already working on interpreting the rest of the text, and the Vesuvius Challenge is inviting others to come forward and join the collaborative project.

"The unique capabilities of synchrotron X-rays have enabled this significant advancement in imaging ancient texts. Diamond is thrilled to be working collaboratively with the University of Oxford and the Scroll Prize team, acting as a crucial starting point in unveiling the contents of these 2,000-year-old artifacts," says Adrian Mancuso, physical science director at Diamond Light Source.

Provided by Diamond Light Source