AI helps researchers read ancient scroll burned to a crisp in Vesuvius eruption

Researchers have peered inside an ancient scroll that was burned to a crisp in the volcanic eruption that destroyed Pompeii nearly 2,000 years ago.

The scroll is one of hundreds found in the library of a Roman mansion in Herculaneum, a town on the west coast of Italy that was wiped out when Mount Vesuvius erupted in AD79.

Excavations at the luxury villa, thought to be owned by Julius Caesar’s father-in-law, recovered a vast collection of scrolls, but the material was so charred that the…