1. Technical Overview

In these tutorials we share the current best tools and techniques for virtually unwrapping and reading carbonized papyrus scrolls without physically opening them.

Our expectation is that you will build on these techniques, improving the tools and models. But of course you may have better ideas, and are free to approach the Vesuvius Challenge any way you think will work!

The three steps in our process for reading a carbonized scroll are:

1. Scanning: creating a 3D scan of a scroll or fragment using x-ray tomography

2. Segmentation and Flattening: finding the layers of the rolled papyrus in the 3D scan and then unrolling them into a flattened "surface volume"

3. Ink Detection: identifying the inked regions in the flattened surface volume using a machine learning model

In 2023, these steps were each improved enough for us to recover text from inside an intact Herculaneum scroll. But there is much room for improvement in each step of the pipeline: currently, we can only read 5% of the complete scroll. We would like to read 90% in 2024. That is your goal!

Virtually Unwrapping the En-Gedi Scroll​

Before we dive into the Herculaneum papyri with their radiolucent ink, it's helpful to understand how the En-Gedi scroll was virtually unwrapped in 2015.

For the Herculaneum papyri, many of the same steps apply, with one key change: the ink is much less readily visible. We will need to use a machine learning model or other tricks to detect the ink.

Let's go through each of the key steps one by one.