UNA NUOVA STAGIONE PER LA PAPIROLOGIA ERCOLANESE: LA VESUVIUS CHALLENGE E LO SVOLGIMENTO VIRTUALE DEI ROTOLI DELLA VILLA DEI PAPIRI

Abstract

Since their discovery in the Villa dei Papiri, the Herculaneum papyri, compressed and carbonized by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD, have always proven to be a big challenge to unroll. After centuries of efforts for mechanical unrolling, the still-rolled scrolls were long left untouched to preserve them and avoid the irreparable damage caused by invasive procedures. The virtual unwrapping of a Herculaneum papyrus stored at the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres opens up new prospects to unlock the texts that still remain hidden within the wraps of closed scrolls. Starting from the previous context and preliminary achievements, this paper provides an account of the virtual unwrapping of PHercParis 4 in the framework of the Vesuvius Challenge, an international competition to read the unopened Herculaneum Papyri using machine learning and computer vision techniques.