The breakthrough could allow for the deciphering of the carbonised papyrus scrolls from the Roman town of Herculaneum, which were damaged by the volcanic eruption that destroyed Pompeii in AD 79. 

Researchers had been unable to read the documents – until today. By relying on 3D X-ray scans of the scrolls produced by a University of Kentucky team, as well as the latest AI tools, researchers have been able to translate one word in the scrolls: “porphyras”, which means “purple”.

The breakthrough was achieved simultaneously by Luke Farritor, a 21-year-old computer science student at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and Youssef Nader, a data science graduate student at the Free University of Berlin in Germany. 

“When I saw the first image, I was shocked,” said Federica Nicolardi, a papyrologist at the University of Naples in Italy. “I can actually see something from the inside of a scroll.”

The two researchers were taking part in a competition launched...