Writing seen in PHerc. 306B, for the first time in 2000 years

A team has recovered the first readable writing from PHerc. 306B, a carbonized Herculaneum scroll buried in the eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79. Liam Warner and Nicola Bodill won the Vesuvius Challenge’s $50,000 First Letters Prize after identifying at least ten readable characters in a small area of the tightly compressed papyrus. Their work also established that PHerc. 306B is the upper portion of the original scroll, clarifying how it relates to the smaller PHerc. 306A fragment. Several other teams found the same passage but could not meet the prize threshold.

The crucial reading is τὸ δι᾽ αὑτὸ αἱρετόν, roughly “that which is desirable for its own sake.” Earlier attempts had detected the opening sequence but left the following letters ambiguous; improved imaging made a stroke visible that supported reading αι rather than μ or ν. The phrase has parallels in philosophical texts, including Aristotle, Sextus Empiricus, and Philodemus, and is especially significant in an Epicurean context, where it may refer to what is good and pleasurable in itself. The team combined a 3D surface reconstruction with two machine-learning ink-detection models, refining both the papyrus segment and the model’s predictions. The result strengthens PHerc. 306B’s prospects for a larger prize requiring extensive virtual unrolling and reading, while illustrating how computational methods and specialist knowledge can work together to recover ancient texts.