KU Leuven researchers study ancient cuneiform using high-tech scanner
The juxtaposition is uncanny: In a suitcase in the offices of K.U.Leuven's Syro-Mesopotamian Studies Unit lies a high-tech scanning device designed to make three-dimensional images of cuneiform, one of the earliest known forms of written expression, etched into clay tablets. Professor Karel Van Lerberghe, the unit's head, spoke with us about the new, high-tech tool.
Professor Karel Van Lerberghe with the dome | © KU Leuven - Rob Stevens
Cuneiform on clay tablets; the tablets come from Mesopotamia, 'the land between rivers', right?
Van Lerberghe: "Yes, an area that is now Iraq, Syria and Turkey. An Assyriologist or cuneiform scholar studies the fifteen or so languages that used cuneiform. In Leuven, we focus on two of the oldest – Babylonian and Sumerian – and we concentrate on the period from 2000 to 330 BCE. This ranges from the time of King Hammurabi to the arrival of Alexander the Great, when other languages written on papyrus and pottery were introduced. The clay tablets upon which cuneiform was written stood the test of time better than papyrus, so a lot of clay tablets, both fired and unfired, remain – an estimated one million, in fact."
One million clay tablets; they must contain a wealth of knowledge.
"Yes and no, because only some 100,000 of them have been published. Large museums, for instance, occassionally make a small selection of their collection available. The customary transfer method is basic and time-consuming: an Assyriologist makes a sketch of the tablet. With an ordinary photograph, the quality is too poor and can often only render 80 per cent of the clay tablet's three-dimensional surface. Handmade sketches are the only alternative. This is painstaking work. Sketching a single tablet takes days and is prone to copying errors. That level of labor intensity, plus the fact that there are only 200 Assyriologists active throughout the world, means that much of the available material is never studied."
So a method was needed to publish tablets faster and in better quality?
"Right, and that's why we sought out the engineers at ESAT, KU Leuven's Department of Electrical Engineering. When Professor Oosterlinck was still rector, he visited our excavations in Syria. He suggested the possibility of using technology to make high-quality copies of the tablets. This initiated a long-term cooperation. The dome, a 3D scanner, is the end result. It has a diameter of just under a meter and is outfitted with 260 LEDs. These lights take turns illuminating the clay tablet and record the six sides of the tablet, rendering it in three dimensions. With a computer, you can rotate the images. It gives the impression that you're holding the object up to the light yourself. You can adjust the light density and print off an image with 'line drawing printing', which makes the cuneiform on the tablet much more visible than it is even to the naked eye. Moreover, it only takes 15 minutes to scan a clay tablet. 3D models can even be calculated using the scanner. The first version of the dome was as big as the lab that housed it – almost ridiculous considering how small the clay tablets were that it was meant to scan. Meanwhile we’ve developed a model that can be disassembled and fit into a suitcase."
Does that suitcase do a fair bit of traveling?
"Yes, we lend out the dome regularly and send one of our Assyriologists to operate it. We work with other universities with cuneiform collections, such as Cornell University in the U.S. or the University of Jena in Germany, as well as with museums, including the British Museum, the Royal Museums of Art and History in Brussels and the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. We also participate in the worldwide Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative project, an online library of drawings, photographs and scans of cuneiform tablets."
The dome has been in use for five years now. Has it already yielded promising research results?
"Yes, there has been significant progress since the mass texts have become available digitally. A good example is the new comparison drawn between of the religious capital of Nippur in the southern part of the Old Babylonian Empire, and Delphi in Ancient Greece. After about 1700 BCE, all archeological traces of this southern region disappear. In our current historiography, it was thought that this region was uninhabited, supposedly due to a natural disaster. Thanks to digitalised tablets, we now know that this was not the case; the area was still inhabited – perhaps occupied – by other people who spoke other languages. The region's native inhabitants shifted their culture to the north. They even built new cities, such as Dur-Abieshuh, where they continued worshiping the gods of Nippur in newly-built temples. Using scans provided by the dome we can also elaborate on the origin and evolution of cuneiform writing."
Does the dome have other applications?
"Certainly, the technology applies to all objects with relief. Egyptologists are keen to scan cylinder seals imprinted with hieroglyphs, for instance. Also, Professor Philip Van Peer, who is supervising the project, would like to test the dome on prehistoric stone tools. Museums can use the scanner to catalog their small objects. I will be retiring next year, but my successors will have plenty of work to do."
http://www.arts.kuleuven.be/info/ONO/Meso/home/
