First complete passages from ancient Herculaneum scroll decoded

Sign up for CNN’s Wonder Theory science newsletter. CNN — After using artificial intelligence to uncover the first word to be read from an unopened Herculaneum scroll, a team of researchers has revealed several nearly complete passages from the ancient text, giving insight into philosophy from almost 2,000 years ago. “It’s incredibly gratifying to know that these things are available, and we have now a mechanism to read them — and that reading them is going to create an entire field of study and scholarship for classicists,” said Brent Seales, a computer science professor at the University of Kentucky and a cocreator of the Vesuvius Challenge. The trio uncovered the text by applying a technique known as “virtual unwrapping” to the rolled-up scroll — one of several owned by the Institut de France — which was released on the contest’s website. Seales said he hopes that almost an entire scroll will be deciphered this year — and the new grand prize contest puts forth an even more ambitious goal, offering a cash prize of $100,000 for the first team that can decipher at least 90% of all four scrolls released on the contest’s website.