First images of PHerc. 1667.
When Vesuvius buried Herculaneum, it turned many papyrus scrolls in the Villa dei Papiri
to burnt hunks of carbon without destroying their physical structure. Since
the 2010s
(or earlier?), people have tried to non-invasively image what remains of the scrolls.
In June 2026, the latest “Vesuvius Challenge” prize was
awarded to a team who successfully imaged the first “complete” scroll.
The team’s report (“Complete virtual unwrapping and reading of a rolled Herculaneum papyrus”,
Angelotti et al., 2026) points out that
the scroll is even less “complete” than it used to be: invasive efforts in the late 20th century
had already reduced it from about 14 grams of carbonized gunk to about 6 grams. The group’s full
transcription consists of only 300 to 400 complete words. They identify PHerc. 1667
as some sort of philosophical treatise — unsurprising, as many of the scrolls that could
already be deciphered turned out to be works of Philodemus.
Contrary to some media reports, the title of PHerc. 1667’s work is unknown;
but a separate finding reported in the same paper identifies PHerc. 139 as
book 8 of Philodemus’s On gods (περὶ θεῶν, book Η).

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Arthur O'Dwyer

A personal blog post covering four unrelated recent discoveries: the Vesuvius Challenge team's successful imaging and partial transcription of Herculaneum scroll PHerc. 1667 (a philosophical treatise, ~300-400 words recovered); the rediscovery of three lost songs from Gilbert & Sullivan's Iolanthe found in a British Library manuscript; a proposed (skeptically received) decipherment of the Minoan Linear A script as Semitic; and a real-world art installation featuring the 'hat' aperiodic monotile discovered in 2022.

Some recent discoveries