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Vesuvius Challenge 2023 Grand Prize awarded: we can read the first scroll

scrollprize.org

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Re: Vesuvius Challenge 2023 Grand Prize awarded: we can read the first scroll

#41

Post by Tronno »

tobinfricke wrote: post #33
bglazer wrote: post #8

One aspect of archaeology that I really find fascinating is the practice of leaving certain artifacts unexplored. The original discoverers of the scrolls tried to unroll a few, apparently found it was impossible without completely destroying the scroll, and then just left the rest undisturbed. Rather than pushing forward and destroying everything, they left these as a mystery for a future age. Two centuries (!!) late…

Similarly, there are large sections of Pompeii, which remain unexcavated -- left for the future.

Herculaneum, where these scrolls are from, is 75% unexcavated! And it will likely remain this way for some time, as Naples sits right on top of it.

Re: Vesuvius Challenge 2023 Grand Prize awarded: we can read the first scroll

#42

Post by cooper_ganglia »

clawoo wrote: post #27
codeulike wrote: post #18

Over 2000 years ago a chap called Philodemus sits in the library of a luxurious villa owned by a rich guy who likes collecting art and writing. He writes his thoughts on pleasure, and the relationship between the quantity of something and the pleasure that might derive from it. The scroll goes on the shelves with the others. He writes lots. At some point later the villa is covered by lava from mt vesuvius. 2000 years…

I have too wild imagination sometimes. I picture him with a shocked look on his face, similar to what one of the modern 'thinkers' would have if they forgot to clear their browser history and somehow someone restored it in the future. "You recovered... uh... everything?"

Your comment prompted me to go in search of something I'd seen several years ago: something about an advertisement in Pompeii for prostitutes, or something like that. Anyway, I couldn't find exactly what I went in search of, but I did stumble upon this oddly specific, yet interesting, Wikipedia entry:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erotic_art_in_Pompeii_and_Herc...

Priapus had it goin' on! Reading the Priapeia for the first time is a treat...

Re: Vesuvius Challenge 2023 Grand Prize awarded: we can read the first scroll

#43

Post by nindalf »

bee_rider wrote: post #31
clawoo wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have too wild imagination sometimes. I picture him with a shocked look on his face, similar to what one of the modern 'thinkers' would have if they forgot to clear their browser history and somehow someone restored it in the future. "You recovered... uh... everything?"

That recovery is much easier though, it is using the device as intended. And of course, rm just unlinks, doesn’t actually delete, so even going a step further and recovering deleted content is hardly magic. This is more like if, sometime in the future, they somehow successfully reconstructed a snapshot of our computers’ volatile memory by examining the power supply, or something ridiculous like that.

Big if.

We’ll lose a lot of digital data simply because we won’t have the means to read it. CD-readers aren’t manufactured anymore in volume. It’s easy to imagine society in 40 years not having any CD readers handy but having a bunch of CDs they want to read. Now multiply that by all the funny storage formats we’ve created over the years.

Re: Vesuvius Challenge 2023 Grand Prize awarded: we can read the first scroll

#44

Post by Animats »

kilroy123 wrote: post #20
jdminhbg wrote: post #12

Here is the link to their "master plan" to read all of the excavated scrolls: https://scrollprize.org/master_plan It looks like there are two main bottlenecks to reading more: the need for manual intervention in segmenting the scanned scrolls, and the cost in scanning new scrolls.

What a refreshingly clear and thought-out plan. This project honestly gives me a lot of hope.

Yes. Now it can be done, but costs too much. Once they get a scanning unit near the scrolls, it will be much cheaper. The data reduction will probably get cheaper, too.

Re: Vesuvius Challenge 2023 Grand Prize awarded: we can read the first scroll

#45

Post by Digory »

riffraff wrote: post #3
sekai wrote: post #2

> We estimate that the scrolls we have in Naples contain more than 16 megabytes of text. Some members of our papyrology team say that revealing this text will be the greatest revolution in the classics since the Renaissance Amazing achievement, let's hope the Italian government allows for additional excavation of the villa.

they likely would, Pompeii and Herculaneum are _still_ being excavated after two centuries, it's not like things are still. But we have only read 5% of this scroll and there are a ton more already excavated, it will probably take years before we manage to process what we already have.

If you can automate the input, you can probably automate much of the basic analysis (things that would be "revolutionary" to undergrads).

"ChatGPT, give me the highlights of these ancient Greek scrolls ..."

Re: Vesuvius Challenge 2023 Grand Prize awarded: we can read the first scroll

#46

Post by rrr_oh_man »

cooper_ganglia wrote: post #42
clawoo wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have too wild imagination sometimes. I picture him with a shocked look on his face, similar to what one of the modern 'thinkers' would have if they forgot to clear their browser history and somehow someone restored it in the future. "You recovered... uh... everything?"

Your comment prompted me to go in search of something I'd seen several years ago: something about an advertisement in Pompeii for prostitutes, or something like that. Anyway, I couldn't find exactly what I went in search of, but I did stumble upon this oddly specific, yet interesting, Wikipedia entry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erotic_art_in_Pompeii_and_Herc... Priapus had it goin' on! Reading the Priapeia for the…

> something about an advertisement in Pompeii for prostitutes, or something like that

Maybe something along these lines?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lupanar#Graffiti

Re: Vesuvius Challenge 2023 Grand Prize awarded: we can read the first scroll

#47

Post by wayvey »

klyrs wrote: post #40
unsupp0rted wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Rather than pushing forward and destroying everything In the early days they wouldn't have accomplished anything by pushing forward, so it doesn't take all that much restraint. I'm more impressed by people in, say, the 1990s or early 2000s. They might've had a shot but there was still too much risk, so they restrained themselves until it was a safer bet.

On the other hand, we ground up mummies for paint to the point that we ran out and used fresher corpses to meet demand. It is a bit of miracle that they were preserved, and not just discarded.

Where can I read more about this? Frankly I'm a bit surprised that I've never heard about this considering how shocking it sounds.

Re: Vesuvius Challenge 2023 Grand Prize awarded: we can read the first scroll

#48

Post by nerdo »

clawoo wrote: post #27
codeulike wrote: post #18

Over 2000 years ago a chap called Philodemus sits in the library of a luxurious villa owned by a rich guy who likes collecting art and writing. He writes his thoughts on pleasure, and the relationship between the quantity of something and the pleasure that might derive from it. The scroll goes on the shelves with the others. He writes lots. At some point later the villa is covered by lava from mt vesuvius. 2000 years…

I have too wild imagination sometimes. I picture him with a shocked look on his face, similar to what one of the modern 'thinkers' would have if they forgot to clear their browser history and somehow someone restored it in the future. "You recovered... uh... everything?"

[dead]

Re: Vesuvius Challenge 2023 Grand Prize awarded: we can read the first scroll

#49

Post by cooper_ganglia »

This is amazing and very, very exciting!

It is wild to me, though, that if I have an SSD fail it's essentially unrecoverable, but a 2,000-year old, rolled-up, lava-burnt scroll of Papyrus can be read using Technology™! I love to see it!

Re: Vesuvius Challenge 2023 Grand Prize awarded: we can read the first scroll

#50

Post by klyrs »

wayvey wrote: post #47
klyrs wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand, we ground up mummies for paint to the point that we ran out and used fresher corpses to meet demand. It is a bit of miracle that they were preserved, and not just discarded.

Where can I read more about this? Frankly I'm a bit surprised that I've never heard about this considering how shocking it sounds.

Wild, isn't it? Hands down my favorite historical fact learned in 2023.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mummy_brown

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