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In AD79, the eruption of Mount Vesuvius laid waste to Pompeii and nearby Herculaneum. The intense heat from the blast of hot gas carbonised hundreds of ancient scrolls in the library of an enormous luxury villa.

Researchers have now launched an international competition to read the charred papyri after demonstrating that an artificial intelligence programme can extract letters and symbols from high resolution X-ray images of the fragile documents.

So what treasures of antiquity could be hidden within these scrolls?

Newshour's Razia Iqbal has been speaking to Tobias Reinhardt, professor of Latin at the University of Oxford.

(Photo shows: A fragment of Herculaneum scroll, pictured in London 2019. Credit: Getty Images)