Vesuvius Challenge: First letters found in new scroll
scrollprize.substack.com
Vesuvius Challenge: First letters found in new scroll
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Re: Vesuvius Challenge: First letters found in new scroll
#2This is really interesting and a challenge for folks who love to solve puzzles like this. Can't wait to see what folks are able to uncover.
I wonder if any of the techniques used on other similarly decoded scrolls can work here.
Re: Vesuvius Challenge: First letters found in new scroll
#3Glad to see there are more developments in the Vesuvius challenge - it has been one of the most interesting things I've discovered on HN.
Re: Vesuvius Challenge: First letters found in new scroll
#4Re: Vesuvius Challenge: First letters found in new scroll
#5Being Greek and having a bad handwriting I’m sure I could help with deciphering some letters. Heck, I can even see a capital lambda “Λ” in the lowres image :-)
This would be a good case for a crowdsourcing science project with Greek universities/high schools.
Re: Vesuvius Challenge: First letters found in new scroll
#6Being Greek and having a bad handwriting I’m sure I could help with deciphering some letters. Heck, I can even see a capital lambda “Λ” in the lowres image :-) This would be a good case for a crowdsourcing science project with Greek universities/high schools.
iirc the challenge is not so much recognition of letters as calibrating all systems to flesh them out in the first place.
The scrolls are stuck in their rolled state, very fragile, and, well, paper-thin.
Re: Vesuvius Challenge: First letters found in new scroll
#7They say they have Python and C APIs that can be used to explore the scroll. I had a look and they have a "tutorial" in a Python notebook: https://colab.research.google.com/github/ScrollPrize/vesuviu...
But I can't make any sense of that, unfortunately :( can someone perhaps explain in terms a programmer would understand, how would I go about using this API to find the text? As far as I can see the dataset just contains a bunch of vertical and horizontal slices of the scroll and I have a hard time understanding how that can provide anything about what's written in them.
Re: Vesuvius Challenge: First letters found in new scroll
#8Given this is a join over image analysis, text recognition, data science and a huge complex 3D analytical model of scans which has to be mapped to the surface states, unrolled, and then subjected to edge and other discrimination, I think the application of ML and other novel techniques is great.
The potential for applying lessons learned to other problems in complex surface/manifold scanning, "reading" states from disparate imaging systems, it's got big upsides.
I'm not particularly sure anyone is claiming this is an LLM demonstrator or proves AGI is coming so if you permit me to float a strawman: it isn't.
It's great science. Very impressive work.
Re: Vesuvius Challenge: First letters found in new scroll
#9>the sequence τυγχαν may be the beginning of the verb τυγχάνω: “to happen,” or perhaps “not to happen.”
It says "me tunkhan..", which would indeed mean "let it not happen". Particle "me" means imperative "not". Or it can be part of a condition: "in case it does not happen..."
>there might be the beginning of διατροπή, a word found in other Herculaneum papyri that would mean something like “confusion, agitation, or disgust.”
But it could also be just diatropos - "various, diverse". "Diatrope" can also mean "shame" and "attack (of a disease)" (for example, diatropai nautiodeis - "nausea").
Re: Vesuvius Challenge: First letters found in new scroll
#10They say they have Python and C APIs that can be used to explore the scroll. I had a look and they have a "tutorial" in a Python notebook: https://colab.research.google.com/github/ScrollPrize/vesuviu... But I can't make any sense of that, unfortunately :( can someone perhaps explain in terms a programmer would understand, how would I go about using this API to find the text? As far as I can see the dataset just conta…
This scroll hasn't ever and can't ever been unrolled. It's too fragile for that. The only thing we DO have is a high resolution scan. The trick then of course is how do you "unroll" the scan. Furthermore the scroll is damaged quite heavily. It has carbonized entirely. This means that even _when_ unrolled, it'd be very hard to read. Some progress has been made reading bits and pieces of the scroll using only the scan, but it's tough going.
Long story short: there's no API for the text, because the text is as of yet unknown. Those slices are all we have to go on.