The New Yorker Explores Work of Brent Seales

LEXINGTON, Ky. (Nov. 9, 2015) — As Brent Seales and a group of international collaborators meet today at the University of Kentucky for a “Herculaneum Summit” to discuss future plans of their work, readers across the world are exploring the progress they have made thus far. A story published online today in The New Yorker delves into the group’s mission to digitally reveal text in an ancient Herculaneum scroll. 

“The Quest to Unlock an Ancient Library,” written by John Seabrook, chronicles the journey Seales, professor and chair of the UK Department of Computer Science, and others began embarking on several years ago. The journey to do what was once thought impossible: read text inside a 2,000-year old scroll without opening it.

Seabrook asks his readers if digital technology can make the Herculaneum scrolls legible after 2,000 years. Seales believes the answer is yes.

“As Seales worked on more manuscripts, he realized that what he had thought of as a two-dimensional problem was really three-dimensional. As a writing surface ages, it crinkles and buckles. If Seales could design software that reverse-engineered that aging process with an algorithm—‘something like the stuff that lets you see the flag waving in reverse,’ as he put it— he might be able to virtually flatten the manuscript,” Seabrook wrote.

Seales accomplished that feat recently with another ancient manuscript, the Ein Gedi scroll, by revealing the first eight verses of the Book of Leviticus through the software he and his team developed.

Weaving in past efforts to reveal the Herculaneum text with that of Seales and his collaborators today, The New Yorker piece explains the history behind the scroll and the strides made so far.

But where Seabrook’s story ends is where the Herculaneum project’s next chapter begins. This week, Seales is hosting Daniel Delattre, Vito Mocella, Emmanuel Brun and Claudio Ferrero on UK's campus to plan what’s next in their undertaking to bring back writings from an ancient world.

To read The New Yorker story, visit http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/11/16/the-invisible-library. 

MEDIA CONTACT: Whitney Harder, 859-323-2396, whitney.harder@uky.edu