The Project Avalon Community Forum - Archeology and Anthropology https://projectavalon.net/forum4/ en Thu, 09 Jul 2026 18:18:22 GMT vBulletin 30 https://projectavalon.net/forum4/images/misc/rss.png The Project Avalon Community Forum - Archeology and Anthropology https://projectavalon.net/forum4/ PHerc. 1667 — The First Unrolled Herculaneum Scroll https://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?131403-PHerc.-1667----The-First-Unrolled-Herculaneum-Scroll&goto=newpost Sun, 28 Jun 2026 07:58:08 GMT “The recovered text is a philosophical treatise on ethics, and the evidence points to a Stoic work: it turns on human nature, impulse, and the moral...
“The recovered text is a philosophical treatise on ethics, and the evidence points to a Stoic work: it turns on human nature, impulse, and the moral progress of human beings, and its final preserved column names Aristocreon — nephew and disciple of the great Stoic Chrysippus — which, together with the language and themes of the text, places it in a Stoic context and dates it to the 2nd century BC.”
_______________________________

A fascinating project which is generating some well-justified excitement: the Vesuvius Challenge.

PHerc. 1667 — The First Unrolled Herculaneum Scroll

Complete virtual unwrapping and reading of a rolled Herculaneum papyrus
PDF here: https://scrollprize.org/pdf/main.pdf

The first Herculaneum scroll ever virtually unrolled and read end to end — a fragmentary Stoic ethical treatise (2nd century BC), recovered without opening the carbonized papyrus. Presented in three views: a lightly-normalized raw edition and two reading editions.

Greek transcription of PHerc. 1667 by Giorgio Angelotti, Stephen Parsons, Federica Nicolardi, Youssef Nader, et al. — "Complete virtual unwrapping and reading of a rolled Herculaneum papyrus" (Vesuvius Challenge, 2026). Released under CC BY-NC 4.0. Preprint: https://scrollprize.org/pdf/main.pdf · Announcement: https://scrollprize.org/firstscroll

Attribution
Original Author
Unattributed (Stoic, 2nd c. BC)
Source
Vesuvius Challenge (Angelotti et al.)
License
CC BY-NC 4.0

__________________

Continuous reading edition here: https://www.kevilex.com/texts/6982ef...s%2Fpherc-1667

Images and overview of the challenge can be seen here: https://scrollprize.org/firstscroll

A brief description of the methodology employed, here:
- Herculaneum scrolls scanned via synchrotron micro‑CT. These are the core targets for "virtual unwrapping" and reading.

- Detached fragments with exposed ink on their surfaces. These are especially useful for building and validating ML approaches (e.g., ink detection), because they provide ground truth signals.
The unwrapping process image data: https://scrollprize.org/unwrapping ]]> Archeology and Anthropology Tintin https://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?131403-PHerc.-1667----The-First-Unrolled-Herculaneum-Scroll