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Vesuvius Scroll Prize

By Justin G. on 23DEC28THU

I’m looking forward to the update at the end of the month when the grand prize is announced for virtually unrolling two four tweet length passages from the Herculaneum scrolls. These scrolls were buried when Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 AD, the same eruption that buried Pompeii.

What I’m even more excited about is that if the prize is successful, it indicates that we very likely have the technology to unroll and read the other scrolls. There are more than 1800 more scrolls, and since the main library of the villa they are from has not been discovered yet, there are likely to be many many more scrolls that could be read.

This is a large library of original scrolls of ancient writing. At present only a very small fraction, perhaps 1%, of all ancient western writing has survived by copying to the present day. It is a huge deal. We may find missing works of known great authors. We may find works and authors that have only been mentioned. We will probably find wholly unknown texts and authors. It’s probably true that a lot of it will be not that exciting.

Scanning these scrolls is a lot of work, so even with these advances in virtually unrolling them, this is going to take a long time. Something to look forward to over the coming years.

The Link: https://scrollprize.org^a

See more links on the Interesting Links page.

Email me if you know similar science prizes.