Farritor, a Husker undergraduate, has been named a co-winner of a $700,000 prize for deciphering scroll passages. This achievement marks a significant milestone as Farritor previously decoded the first Greek word from an ancient scroll
In late 2023, Nebraska’s Luke Farritor became the first to free a Greek word from its prison: papyrus charred into a lump of carbon by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius nearly 2,000 years ago.
That feat would earn Farritor worldwide acclaim and $40,000 from the organizers of the Vesuvius Challenge, a global effort to decode the writings of burnt scrolls recovered from a library in the Roman town of Herculaneum. For most, it would rank as the achievement of a lifetime.
But the Husker undergrad and Lincoln native was far from finished. On Feb. 5, the Vesuvius Challenge named Farritor, Youssef Nader and Julian Schilliger the co-winners of its $700,000 Grand Prize for deciphering at least four passages of text, each 140-plus characters long, from digital scans of a seared scroll.
