Artificial Intelligence has enabled researchers to decipher a carbonized papyrus buried by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79. Using advanced X-ray imaging and AI algorithms, scientists were able to read the text without physically unrolling the fragile scroll. The manuscript is attributed to the Epicurean philosopher Philodemus and discusses pleasure as the highest good in Epicurean philosophy. This breakthrough represents a major achievement in archaeology and the humanities, offering the possibility of recovering the contents of hundreds of other unreadable ancient scrolls. The combination of AI and modern imaging technologies is transforming the study and preservation of classical literature.
History is written not only by what survives, but also by what has been lost, concealed, or deliberately destroyed. The search for historical truth is not an attack on faith; it is a commitment to knowledge and to human civilization. Every new discovery—whether made through archaeology or through the growing capabilities of Artificial Intelligence—brings humanity one step closer to understanding its true past.
For many years, one question has persistently troubled the author.
The Sophists of ancient Greece built their teachings upon humanism, rationalism, the rejection of the theocratic and cosmological worldview of their age, and the questioning of established institutions. They were numerous, celebrated, and respected—even by their ideological opponents. Yet not a single one of their original works has survived. Not even by accident or sheer coincidence.
During the first century AD, many distinguished historians flourished and produced extensive bodies of work. We mention only the best known, although historiography was undoubtedly practiced by many others whose names themselves have been lost to history. We know of Claudius (10 BC–54 AD), Agrippina the Younger (15–59 AD), Pliny the Elder (23–79 AD), and Memnon of Heraclea (1st, perhaps early 2nd century ) yet none of their historical writings have survived.
From that same century, however, the works of three great historians have endured. All three make brief references to the historical existence of Jesus Christ. Yet the passages attributed to Josephus (37–c.100 AD) and Tacitus (56–120 AD) are widely regarded as interpolated or forged, while the single authentic reference by Suetonius (69 or 75–125 AD) is of little historical significance, as it merely concerns disturbances among Jews and early Christians in Rome over the figure of the Messiah, Christ.
It should also be noted that from the vast literary output of the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus only The Jewish War and Antiquities of the Jews have survived. Neither contains any unequivocal contemporary account of Jesus himself, despite Josephus being a Jew and living relatively close to the period in question.
If it is true that Caliph Umar ordered the burning of the Library of Alexandria with the famous reasoning that “if the books agree with the Qur’an they are unnecessary; if they disagree, they are harmful, therefore they must be burned,” then the Christian priesthood committed a comparable crime against the literary heritage of ancient Greece and Rome, as well as against the works of art and sacred relics of classical antiquity.
“Cast them into the fire and raze them to the ground.”
We hope that one day the truth will emerge. “Nothing is hidden under the sun”—or beyond it. Other “Vesuviuses,” whatever they may one day be called, will uncover more parchments and papyri. Artificial Intelligence, now becoming omnipresent, will once again perform what appears almost miraculous, just as it recently helped recover the carbonized work of the philosopher Philodemus.
An even greater achievement lies ahead. Superintelligence, which may soon become universally established, could accomplish what has long seemed impossible. Tomorrow it may no longer belong to the realm of fantasy or science fiction: not only to unroll and read buried papyri, but also to open and decipher the “archives of heaven”—the complete data of Earth, preserved as our planet lives and journeys through the endless Universe.
Then humanity may finally witness and understand the full extent of the crimes committed throughout history by religious establishments and every form of temporal power, whose victims were not only the innocent and the weak, but knowledge itself and the very progress of science.