At first glance, the Herculaneum scrolls look unremarkable, like pieces of coal. After surviving the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in year 79, the nearly 2,000-year-old documents would crumble if anyone attempted to unroll them, and surviving pieces with writing were considered to be nearly illegible to the human eye — until now. After two millennia, the first full word from one of the unopened ancient papyri has been decoded with the help of computer technology and advanced artificial intelligence. “Porphyras,” which means “purple” in Greek, was found first by University of Nebraska computer science student Luke Farritor, who participated in the contest, which calls for competitors to apply a technique known as “virtual wrapping” to two rolled-up scrolls released on the site, in an attempt to decipher the hidden words. Virtual unwrapping begins with computer tomography, an X-ray procedure that is used to scan each coiled-up, warped papyrus. After following along the curved layers in the scan, researchers then virtually flatten the scrolls and explore them using advanced AI that has been trained to find the ink on the page. The technology was created by University of Kentucky computer science professor Brent Seales and has been in development for nearly 20 years now. The 79 A.D. eruption of Vesuvius, a volcano located near Naples, Italy, covered the ancient Roman cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum in volcanic mud. Herculaneum and the scrolls remained buried until the city’s accidental rediscovery by a worker drilling for a well in the early 1700s, according to the Herculaneum Society. Approximately 1,100 carbonized scrolls, now referred to as the Herculaneum scrolls, were recovered from a building that was believed to be Julius Caesar’s father-in-law’s house, according to the University of Kentucky. The collection is referred to as the only known large-scale library from the classical antiquity. In the 19th century, hundreds of scrolls were pulled apart by machine and the brittle papyri were left in pieces, according to the university’s website. Michael McOsker, a postdoctoral researcher in papyrology at the University College London, has been studying the scrolls that were previously unrolled, which had caused the papyri to be fragmentary and hard to read. “Obviously, there’s a long way to go before we can read a whole roll, which is the real goal, but I’m sure it’s a solvable problem now, and one that might not even take that long,” McOsker said. (SD-Agencies) Words to Learn 相關(guān)詞匯 【難以辨認(rèn)的】nányǐ biànrèn de illegible impossible or almost impossible to read because of being very untidy or not clear 【莎草紙學(xué)】shācǎozhǐ xué papyrology the care, reading, and interpretation of ancient documents written on papyrus 赫庫(kù)蘭尼姆古卷經(jīng)歷了公元79年的維蘇威火山爆發(fā)，乍一看并不起眼，像一塊煤。如果有人想展開這些近2000年前的文件，它們馬上就會(huì)碎掉，而幸存有文字的卷軸此前肉眼幾乎無(wú)法辨認(rèn)。 時(shí)隔兩千年之后，在計(jì)算機(jī)技術(shù)和先進(jìn)人工智能的幫助下，這些未打開的古代莎草紙卷中的第一個(gè)完整文字被解碼了。內(nèi)布拉斯加大學(xué)計(jì)算機(jī)專業(yè)學(xué)生盧克?法里托發(fā)現(xiàn)了“Porphyras”這個(gè)詞，它在希臘語(yǔ)中是“紫色”的意思。 虛擬解碼的第一步是計(jì)算機(jī)斷層掃描，即用 X 射線掃描卷曲變形的莎草紙。在沿著弧形層進(jìn)行掃描后，研究人員利用經(jīng)過(guò)訓(xùn)練的人工智能把卷軸虛擬平展，尋找頁(yè)面上的墨跡。這項(xiàng)技術(shù)由肯塔基大學(xué)計(jì)算機(jī)教授布倫特?西爾斯首創(chuàng)，已研發(fā)了近20年。 公元 79 年，位于意大利那不勒斯附近的維蘇威火山爆發(fā)，火山泥覆蓋了古羅馬城市龐貝和赫庫(kù)蘭尼姆。赫庫(kù)蘭尼姆協(xié)會(huì)稱，古城和卷軸一直埋在地下，直到17世紀(jì)初被一名工人打井時(shí)意外發(fā)現(xiàn)。 肯塔基大學(xué)稱，大約1100卷碳化卷軸（稱為赫庫(kù)蘭尼姆卷軸）是從一棟據(jù)信是凱撒大帝岳父家的建筑中發(fā)掘出來(lái)的。該發(fā)現(xiàn)被稱為古典時(shí)期唯一已知的大型藏書。 肯塔基大學(xué)網(wǎng)站介紹， 19 世紀(jì)間數(shù)以百計(jì)的卷軸被機(jī)器強(qiáng)行拉開，易碎的莎草紙成了碎片。 倫敦大學(xué)學(xué)院莎草紙學(xué)博士后研究員邁克爾?麥考斯克一直在研究卷軸，它們支離破碎，難以辨認(rèn)。 麥考斯克說(shuō)：“顯然，要想讀懂一整卷莎草紙還有很長(zhǎng)的路要走，這是我們的真正目標(biāo)，但現(xiàn)在我相信這個(gè)目標(biāo)能實(shí)現(xiàn)，甚至不需要那么久。” (Translated by Debra) | 