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Vesuvius Challenge awarded its $50,000 First Letters Prize to Liam Warner and Nicola Bodill for recovering readable Greek text from PHerc. 306B, a carbonized scroll from Herculaneum. The reading is a short, partly reconstructed phrase that may mean “that which is in itself desirable”; the wider work and its author remain unidentified.
Vesuvius Challenge has awarded its $50,000 First Letters Prize to Liam Warner and Nicola Bodill for recovering readable Greek writing from PHerc. 306B, a carbonized Herculaneum scroll that had not previously been read. Their work used imaging and ink detection to reveal a short passage deep within the scroll’s tightly compressed layers, offering a new piece of evidence about a text buried in the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79.
The prize organizers said the successful entry met the contest’s target of identifying 10 readable characters within a 4-square-centimeter area. They reviewed 25 submissions on PHerc. 306, and several teams examined the same region. Some recovered seven, eight or nine characters, but fell short of the stated threshold. The challenge credited Warner, a freelance software engineer from northern England, and Bodill, an Australian postgraduate student with training in Latin and Ancient Greek.
The passage was identified in PHerc. 306B, one of two pieces into which the scroll is divided. The Vesuvius Challenge report said that locating the ink and considering the script’s orientation also clarified the fragments’ positions: 306B is the upper section of the original roll, while the smaller PHerc. 306A is the lower section. The scan images show the papyrus sheet the pair isolated deep within the scroll’s windings, where heat damage and compression have distorted the material.
A sequence of Greek letters, το δι᾽ αὑτὸ αἱρετόν, is now considered a plausible reading. The organizers translate it as “that which is in itself desirable.” They said the key improvement was making a faint stroke visible, allowing the papyrology team to distinguish the reading from alternatives. The phrase is not a complete identification of the work: it is a short passage whose interpretation depends on the surrounding text, much of which has not yet been recovered.
A New Clue in Herculaneum’s Scrolls
The discovery shows how virtual unrolling and computational ink detection can make text accessible without physically opening a fragile, carbonized papyrus. Herculaneum scrolls can be damaged by attempts to unroll them, and their tightly folded, heat-distorted layers make direct reading difficult. Recovering even a small passage can provide scholars with evidence to compare against known ancient texts and ideas.
The phrase may be relevant to ancient philosophical writing. The Vesuvius Challenge report notes parallels in works associated with Aristotle and Sextus Empiricus, as well as a similar expression in Philodemus’ ethical treatise On Anger. Those parallels make the proposed reading interesting, but do not establish that PHerc. 306B contains any of those works. Further text is needed before scholars can identify its author or argument.
The result also reflects a collaborative process: entries were assessed against a specific character-and-area threshold, and several contributors approached it. The prize recognizes the successful submission while the competing attempts helped focus attention on the same difficult segment.
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From Villa of the Papyri to CT Scans
PHerc. 306 was buried in the AD 79 eruption of Mount Vesuvius and excavated in the 1750s. It is held at the Biblioteca Nazionale di Napoli, about 10 kilometers from the Villa dei Papiri at Herculaneum, where it was originally found. Like other papyri from the site, it was carbonized by the eruption and has remained difficult to read.
The scroll was micro-CT scanned the year before the prize announcement, according to the Vesuvius Challenge. The scans capture internal layers, which researchers can computationally map and inspect. In this case, the text-bearing sheet was heavily compressed inside the roll. Before ink was identified in 306B, the relative positions of its two surviving portions were not known, the organizers said.
The Vesuvius Challenge brings researchers and members of the public together to develop methods for reading the Herculaneum papyri without physically unrolling them. The PHerc. 306B award is a specific result from that effort, rather than a claim that the entire scroll has been deciphered.
““For the first time, the papyrology team agreed on the reading of αι.””
— Vesuvius Challenge
The Scroll’s Wider Text Remains Unknown
The recovered phrase is short, and the scroll’s author, title and full subject are not established by the passage. The proposed reading is supported by the team’s interpretation of the visible strokes and by linguistic parallels, but the surrounding lines remain necessary to settle its meaning in context. The report does not say that the whole scroll has been read.
Nor does the prize account establish how much writing can ultimately be recovered from PHerc. 306B, or when additional text might be available. The companion fragment, PHerc. 306A, has become a more promising target now that ink has been identified in 306B, but its contents have not yet been reported. The wider condition and legibility of that lower portion remain unclear.
Further Scans Could Extend the Reading
The Vesuvius Challenge says PHerc. 306A is now more valuable to scan and virtually unroll following the identification of ink in 306B. Researchers can also continue to refine the models and images used to isolate papyrus layers and distinguish ink from the surrounding material. No timetable for a further reading is given in the report.
The next useful step is to recover more connected text around the phrase. A longer passage could help scholars test the proposed wording, identify its philosophical context and determine whether the scroll relates to any known author or treatise. Until such evidence is available, the prize marks a significant reading from one section of the scroll, not a complete decipherment.
Key Questions
What was found in PHerc. 306B?
Researchers recovered a short Greek sequence that the Vesuvius Challenge says can plausibly be read as “that which is in itself desirable.” The wider work has not been identified.
Who read the passage?
Liam Warner and Nicola Bodill made the successful submission. The Vesuvius Challenge awarded them its $50,000 First Letters Prize.
How was the text read without opening the scroll?
The team used micro-CT scan data and ink detection to isolate a papyrus sheet within the scroll’s compressed layers and inspect its writing virtually.
No. The recovered phrase has parallels in ancient philosophical writing, but those similarities do not establish the author or the text’s identity.
What happens to the other part of PHerc. 306?
The smaller fragment, PHerc. 306A, is the lower portion of the original scroll. The Vesuvius Challenge says it is now more valuable to scan and virtually unroll, but has not announced a reading from it.
Source: scrollprize.substack.com
