Recent advances in X-ray tomography and computer vision have enabled us to virtually unwrap ancient scrolls and look inside of them. The Vesuvius Challenge is an open challenge to leverage this advances to read Herculaneum papyri that was burried under volcanic mud.

In this talk, I will present my solution to using AI to read letters from within the scrolls which was awarded a first letters prize by the Vesuvius Challenge. I will talk about the data and challenges of reading carbon-based ink as welll as how I was able to scale up the model and data to read hundreds of letters from within the scrolls.