The Italian daily Lastampa reported on the 23rd that the location of the tomb of the ancient Greek philosopher Plato, which had been shrouded in mystery for over 2,000 years, has been revealed with the help of artificial intelligence (AI). The newspaper reported that the Italian National Research Council succeeded in identifying the location of Plato’s tomb written on a papyrus scroll made about 2,000 years ago.
The name of the scroll is ‘Herculaneum Papyrus’. The ancient city of Herculaneum, which was buried under volcanic ash during the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD, was excavated in 1750, and the number of scrolls discovered amounted to 1,840. However, it is said that the scroll hardened into a lump of charcoal due to the heat from the volcanic ash that poured down when Mount Vesuvius erupted, making it difficult to open the scroll, let alone decipher its contents.
It was thanks to AI technology that the contents of the rolled up scroll were able to be deciphered. Professor Ranocchia’s research team at the University of Pisa, who participated in the study, began to understand the contents little by little three years ago by scanning the contents of unopened scrolls with infrared and X-ray scanners and creating images. Characters that were so severely damaged that they could not be read using this technology were solved by training an AI algorithm that detects the presence of ink in the fiber. The research team announced that they succeeded in deciphering a total of 1,000 new words.
During this process, the research team discovered a document called ‘History of the Academy’ written by Philodemus, a philosopher and poet who lived in Herculaneum. In this document, it was confirmed that Plato was buried in the ground near the temple on the grounds of the Academia School in Athens, Greece. Academia is a school founded by Plato in 387 BC, about 40 years before his death. Until now, it was only known that Plato was buried somewhere within the school grounds after his death, but the location has now become more clear.
Papyrus research, which began three years ago, is scheduled to be completed in 2026. In addition to the secrets of Plato’s tomb, researchers plan to continue research on the remaining 500 papyrus volumes that have not been studied yet in order to find pamphlets written by Aristotle, who studied at the Accademia.
