Digitising Cuneiform Tablets
Digitising Cuneiform Tablets
In 1850, ‘Assyriology’, or the science of reading and interpreting cuneiform, was created. During this period, historians travelled to the Middle East and spent years copying cuneiform tablets. Now, at the beginning of the third millennium AD, not much has changed. Historians still rely on epigraphy which employs the copying of inscriptions and texts by hand. This method is highly subjective, tedious and time-consuming. As Middle Eastern antiquities departments do not allow the export of these tablets, historians and scholars are faced with the challenge of producing more efficient field methods. This chapter discusses a new method of recording the information taken from cuneiform tablets using digitizing. Digital imaging uses a camera wherein the picture captured is linked to a laptop which runs an image processing algorithm program to obtain the desired results. An enhancement method is then applied to improve the quality of the image. Digitizing cuneiform tablets provides historians a working document with legibility of 90 to 95 per cent. Aside from its relatively efficiency, digital imaging can also allow for the registering of various tablets in one excavation season and can be employed in the digital registration of all sealings such as pottery sherds, and fingerprints on clay vessels.
Keywords: Assyriology, science of reading cuneiform, cuneiform tablets, epigraphy, digitizing, digital imaging, image processing algorithm, enhancement method, digitizing cuneiform tablets
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