C. Michael Sampson – The Conversation

The Vesuvius Challenge incentivizes technological development by inviting researchers to figure out how to ‘read’ ancient papyri excavated from volcanic ash of Mount Vesuvius in Italy. Columns of Greek text retrieved from a portion of a scroll. (Vesuvius Challenge)

March 12, 2024

Ancient scrolls are being ‘read’ by machine learning – with human knowledge to detect language and make sense of them

C. Michael Sampson, University of Manitoba

However exciting the technological developments may be, the task of reading and analyzing the Greek and Latin texts recovered from the papyri will fall to human beings.

Fragments of Sappho? The 2014 discovery was of five stanzas of one poem and portions of a second. ('Sappho and Erinna in a Garden at Mytilene,'1864, by Simeon Solomon)

February 11, 2021

Lovers of Sappho thrilled by ‘new’ poetry find, but its backstory may have been fabricated

C. Michael Sampson, University of Manitoba

In 2014, reports of a new discovery of Sappho’s poems were remarkable. New research argues the papyrus had a fabricated backstory.

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