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The original was posted on /r/upliftingnews by /u/HaroldGodwin on 2023-10-18 23:07:33.

Text from ancient Herculaneum scroll read for the first time in 2,000 years. Machine-learning technique reveals Greek words in CT scans of rolled-up papyrus.

The text is one of some 800 scrolls unearthed in the ancient Roman city of Herculaneum in the 1700s. Archaeologists discovered the trove in a villa that may have belonged to Julius Caesar’s father-in-law, a senior Roman statesman.

These discoveries are critical steps toward deciphering the remaining unopened scrolls in the villa. “Recovering such a library would transform our knowledge of the ancient world in ways we can hardly imagine,” says Robert Fowler, a classicist at the University of Bristol in England, to the Times. “The impact could be as great as the rediscovery of manuscripts during the Renaissance.”