Complete virtual unwrapping and reading of a rolled Herculaneum papyrus
Abstract
The carbonized papyri from Herculaneum preserve the only large-scale library to survive from classical antiquity, but many unopened rolls remain unread because physical opening risks irreversible damage. X-ray computed microtomography (CT) and virtual unwrapping offer a non-invasive route to their texts, yet previous work on sealed Herculaneum scrolls has recovered only localized readings or limited surface regions. Here, using high-resolution phase-contrast CT acquired on the BM18 beamline at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF), together with improved computational unrolling and machine learning, we achieve the complete virtual unwrapping and reading of PHerc. 1667 under explicit coverage and papyrological-review criteria. This makes PHerc. 1667 the first Herculaneum papyrus to be fully digitally unrolled and read for extended scholarly study without physical opening. In PHerc. Paris 4, the optimized scan protocol makes ink directly visible in the tomographic volume, allowing three-dimensional ink segmentation and independent validation of surface-conditioned ink recovery. In PHerc. 139, we recover title and author-attribution evidence identifying the scroll as Philodemus, On Gods, Book 8. These results move virtual unwrapping of the Herculaneum scrolls beyond isolated demonstrations towards a scalable framework for systematic recovery of the still-unopened library.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2606.29085,
title = {Complete virtual unwrapping and reading of a rolled Herculaneum papyrus},
author = {Giorgio Angelotti and Stephen Parsons and Federica Nicolardi and Youssef Nader and Sean Johnson and David Josey and Paul Henderson and Hendrik Schilling and Johannes Rudolph and Forrest McDonald and Elian Rafael Dal Prá and Paul Tafforeau and Alessandro Mirone and Clifford Seth Parker and Jan Paul Posma and Benjamin Kyles and Claudio Vergara and Alessia Lavorante and Rossella Villa and Maria Chiara Robustelli and Marzia D'Angelo and Gianluca Del Mastro and Michael McOsker and Kilian Fleischer and Christy Chapman and Nat Friedman and William Brent Seales},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2606.29085},
year = {2026}
}
Comments
Preprint, 4 main figures