Last March the Vesuvius Challenge was announced to find a technique that would allow the ancient scrolls found in the ancient city of Herculeneum to be read. The scrolls that were found burned due to the eruption of Mount Vesuvius almost 2000 years ago which also destroyed Pompeii. Today the organizers of the Vesuvius Challenge announced the first words were successfully read from one of the scrolls found.
The first word successfully read was “ΠΟΡΦΥΡΑϹ” which means purple in ancient Greek. This success opened the opportunity for the 1800 rolls of Herculeneum papyrus found in 1752 to be read for the first time in almost two thousand years.
Three by winners announced for the First Letters Prize category. Luke Farritor, a 21-year-old computer science student doing an industrial internship at SpaceX won first place because he was the first to read a sentence on a scroll. He used machine learning to find traces of ink that were preserved on scrolls even after they had burned.
Second place was won by Youssef Nader, a biorobotics student in Berlin who used the same technique but managed to produce a clearer image. Third place was won by Casey Handmer, a former NASA JPL employee who suggested the use of a technique of analyzing cracks on scrolls to detect the presence of ink.
Farritor was awarded a $40,000 prize while Nader and Handmer each won $10,000. With the success of reading the first word, the Vesuvius Challenge believes the winner of the $700,000 prize for those who succeed in developing a technique to read all 1800 ancient Herculeneum scrolls may soon be announced