Post by @GiffordJames@mas.to

2026-06-27 02:24 UTC

Well, this is big news!!! "We have completely virtually unwrapped and read PHerc. 1667 — the scroll the Vesuvius Challenge community knows as Scroll 4 — without ever touching its pages. It is the first Herculaneum papyrus to be digitally unrolled and read in full, end to end" https://scrollprize.org/firstscroll

Replies (4)

@RueNahcMohr@infosec.exchange 2026-06-27 19:15

@GiffordJames@mas.to well did it turn out to be another tax record or what?

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@GiffordJames@mas.to 2026-06-27 19:26

To be clear, not *my* work! I’m just boosting. (I do ms. and bibliographical work on 19 & 20C)

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@johncarlosbaez@mathstodon.xyz 2026-06-27 09:13

@GiffordJames@mas.to - this is great! Some people working on the Herculaneum papyri were also studying over 400,000 fragments of papyrus found in an ancient garbage dump in the old Egyptian town of Oxyrhynchus. A while back they pieced together new fragments of plays by Euripides, Sophocles and Menander, lost lines from the poets Sappho, Hesiod, and Archilocus, and most of a book by Hesiod: Oxyrhynchus Online, multispectral imaging, http://www.papyrology.ox.ac.uk/multi/procedure.html But I haven't been keeping track of their more recent progress.

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@silmeth@mstdn.social 2026-06-28 08:45

@GiffordJames@mas.to Here’s to hoping there’s a copy of Pytheas and another of Claudius’ work on Etruscan hiding in there too!

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