Omega? There is such a letter! (2 photos)
How a student made a charred scroll from Pompeii speak. 
In 79, when Vesuvius destroyed Pompeii, numerous scrolls, among other things, were buried under the ashes. They were thoroughly charred, making the text impossible to read. But in 2023, it seems that nothing is impossible. 
We don’t even know what surprises us more - the fact that the records on the scrolls were even able to be identified and deciphered, or that it was done by a 21-year-old student. However, it was future programmer Luke Farritor of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln who developed a machine learning algorithm that detected Greek letters on several lines of rolled-up papyrus. To train the neural network, Farritor used subtle differences in surface texture.
The scroll that Luke was deciphering was discovered in the 18th century, when workers stumbled upon the remains of a luxurious villa that may have belonged to the family of Julius Caesar's father-in-law. And it fell into the hands of the young computer scientist thanks to the Vesuvius Challenge competition: the prize for the winner there, by the way, was 40 thousand dollars, so Luke definitely had an incentive.
According to the terms of the competition, it was necessary to find at least ten letters on a piece of papyrus measuring 4 square centimeters. And Luke not only found them, but also put them into a word - it turned out to be πορυρας (porphyry), which means “purple.”
It is clear that the piece of papyrus was too small to make out a coherent text, but the organizers of the competition say that the achievement of Farritor (who, in fact, became the first person in two thousand years to see a whole word on an unopened scroll) will help “bring about a revolution in our knowledge of ancient history and literature"
