Overview
- Researchers announced on June 25, 2026 that they had virtually unwrapped and read PHerc. 1667 end to end, producing about 1.4 metres of readable surface across roughly 22 columns without ever opening the roll.
- The team used high‑resolution phase‑contrast X‑ray microtomography at ESRF’s BM18 beamline and machine‑learning models to reconstruct the scroll geometry, flatten the papyrus surface, and detect ink signals in 3D scans.
- Papyrologists say the recovered text reads as a Stoic ethical treatise dated to the 2nd century BC and names Aristocreon, which helps place authorship and historical context for the passages.
- Independent checks made ink visible inside PHerc. Paris 4 from higher‑resolution 3D data and identified PHerc. 139 as Philodemus’s On Gods, Book 8, while the project published its data, code and models and announced a $1 million prize to read another full scroll.
- About 45 rolls and fragments have been scanned so far but more than 600 sealed scrolls remain, and teams warn that reading the corpus will require more synchrotron time, computing resources, specialist transcription and sustained effort over years.