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To: SunkenCiv

Thanks for the link. The video there is pretty interesting, and you can see how this will be a tremendous aid.

I would think it would also work with pottery, even those with no decorations, as anything like this has GOT to be faster than the one-at-a-time manual matching.

I’ve always hoped that the computer types could come up with an “automated” deciphering, even transliterating, of the Sumerian cuneiform tablets by scanning them in and matching them against the known characters.


4 posted on 08/15/2008 11:21:03 AM PDT by Oatka (A society of sheep must in time beget a government of wolves." –Bertrand de Jouvenel)
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To: Oatka

It’s probably feasible right now, but the body of unread tablets is, uh, I guess still buried and unknown. One idea I had, probably infeasible (the best kind), was using various invisible parts of the spectrum, maybe cat scans, to see if any traces remain of the earlier, erased messages. The reason we have cuneiform archives (such as the one excavated at Mari) is that the town or at least the structure was burned down around them and baked them, preserving the writing. Prior to that, the tablets had been used, “erased”, reused, a number of times.


11 posted on 08/15/2008 10:41:58 PM PDT by SunkenCiv (https://secure.freerepublic.com/donate/_______Profile hasn't been updated since Friday, May 30, 2008)
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