PHerc. 1667 fully unwrapped yielding 22 columns of 2nd-century BC Stoic text

The Vesuvius Challenge team completed non-invasive recovery of PHerc. 1667, a carbonized roll damaged by prior manual attempts in the 1800s and 1980s. Cross-sectional CT data revealed the internal spiral sheet; segmentation produced a 1.4-metre surface on which ink signals were enhanced by trained models. Papyrologists transcribed the lower portions of twenty-two columns, confirming themes of moral progress and naming Aristocreon, placing the treatise in the Stoic tradition linked to Chrysippus.

Independent verification used the released dataset at scrollprize.org/data and GitHub code. Earlier partial successes on PHerc. Paris 4 demonstrated direct ink visibility at higher voxel resolution, establishing repeatability. This pipeline scales beyond single artefacts because reconstruction and detection steps rely on open parameters rather than bespoke hardware.

Operationally the method shifts Herculaneum recovery from destructive unrolling to repeatable digital access. Remaining intact rolls can now be triaged by predicted ink density before allocation of beam time. Long-term, the same volumetric registration techniques apply to other carbonized archives where mechanical opening is impossible.