AI deciphers Herculaneum scrolls buried by Vesuvius in 79 AD

Artificial intelligence has successfully read text from the carbonized Herculaneum scrolls — ancient papyrus documents destroyed and preserved simultaneously when Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 AD. The breakthrough opens a path to unlocking around 800 more scrolls that have sat physically unreadable since their excavation, representing one of the largest untapped caches of classical literature in existence. The scrolls survived nearly 2,000 years intact beneath volcanic material before modern imaging and AI made decipherment possible.