ROME – Amongst the many hobbies and recent funding Musk has provided to a great varied number institutions, is a two-million-euro donation to help decipher the Herculaneum papyri without unrolling them, thanks to AI technology, according to il Mattino.

 There are around five hundred scrolls written almost entire in ancient Greek, that has never been open since they were found in 1752 and 1754 or since they were written nearly two thousand years ago.  

 The scrolls have been conserved in the National Library of Naples, which with his foundation, the one of the richest men in the world has given three million euros “for the culture of ancient Rome”.

 Famously, this has not been the only “Roman” thing Mr. Musk has displayed interest in recently. 

 His collaborator in Italy, Andrea Stroppa, specified that two million would go to completely financing the organisation Vesuvius Challenge. 

 According to Stroppa the donation ‘reflects the vision of Elon Musk to preserve, protect and promote the culture and history of Rome, offering concrete resources to researchers, educators, students, archaeologists, restorers and historians.’

 According to Gianluca Del Maestro, one of the papyrologists involved at Federico II University, who spoke with il Mattino, 10 of the scrolls were going to be transported to Oxford to be scanned, to produce high-resolution images, which could then be translated by experts. 

 Thanks to the use of artificial-intelligence we might be able to understand, for the first time, some of the passages of the carbonised papyri. 

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