CSMC Newsletter

Many museums and archives around the world possess ancient cuneiform tablets that are wrapped in clay envelopes. To this day, there has been no way to read the hidden texts. With ENCI, it is possible to scan and reconstruct them in a completely non-invasive way, thus giving assyriologists access to a wealth of new sources. This February, the device will be used in the field for the first time: UWA researchers will analyse tablets from the Louvre in Paris, which holds one of the largest collections of ancient clay tablets in the world. 

Why were many ancient cuneiform tablets wrapped in clay envelopes, and how come that many of them have never been opened? In our interview, the assyriologist Cécile Michel gives answers to these questions, and she explains which further insights she and her colleagues hope to gain from analysing clay tablets with ENCI: ‘The device not only makes it possible to read hidden texts but also allows us to better understand how the cuneiform tablets and clay envelopes were made.’

‘Cécile Michel and I once had a long chat over dinner. She told me about the sealed cuneiform tablets that she and her colleagues were unable to read, and we quickly realised that X-ray tomography was ideally suited to solving this problem’, says physicist Christian Schroer. In our interview, he explains what obstacles had to be overcome on the way from this first idea to the actual device, and he explains why analysing actual ancient clay is so much more difficult than the tests he and his team had run with replicas. 

On 7 January 2024, we officially launched our latest cultural heritage project in Thrissur, Kerala (India): ‘DiPiKA – Digitisation and Preservation of Kerala Archives’ aims at surveying and digitising palm-leaf manuscripts kept in private collections in Kerala. A further objective is to develop the Kerala Manuscripts Preservation Centre, founded in 2022, which will become the home of the digital community archive of the Kerala manuscript collections. DiPiKA is a collaborative project of the Vadakke Madham Brahmaswam (Vedic Research Centre) in Thrissur, the École française d’Extrême-Orient (EFEO) in Pondicherry, the Hill Museum and Manuscript Library (HMML), and the CSMC. It is generously supported by Arcadia for a period of five years.

When researching or preserving manuscripts, everyone may encounter different kinds of surprising and unique materials. Finding snakeskin in a manuscript, however, is a truly extraordinary occurrence. In the first of two new episode of the video series ‘Written Artefacts of Nepal – Preservation and Documentation’, Bidur Bhattarai presents two manuscripts including snakeskin and shows how they are being preserved. In another new episode, he gives us a glimpse into the preservation measures carried out on manuscripts and other written artefacts at the Central Department of Nepalbhasa at Tribhuvan University.

Computational palaeography is an emerging interdisciplinary field that applies computational methods to ancient handwritten documents. At the intersection of computer vision, instrumental analytics, and palaeography, this field benefits immensely from recent technological advancements. From 30 August to 4 September 2024, the 18th International Conference on Document Analysis and Recognition in Athens aims to convene specialists from these varied backgrounds, targeting professionals in computer science and the natural sciences, as well as the humanities. The prestigious conference also includes the 3rd Workshop on Computational Palaeography, co-organised by UWA researcher Hussein Mohammed. The Call for Papers is now open. 

Although the advancements of AI have become a pervasive topic in research and everyday life, there are still only few forums in which scholars from the humanities and computer scientists meet and discuss the opportunities that the methods, questions, and developments in their respective fields yield for the other side. Bridging the gap between computer science and the humanities is the central tenet of the workshop ‘Humanities-Centred Artificial Intelligence’ (CHAI), which takes place as part of the German Conference on Artificial Intelligence. The proceedings of the third edition of this workshop, held in Berlin in September 2023, are now available open access.

At the start of the new year, we brought together our entire team for an afternoon to update each other on our ongoing research endeavours. Our colleagues braved the snow, ice, and railway strike and turned up in large numbers to explain to one another what it actually is they are doing all day with the help of posters. With 150 members and more than 40 disciplines represented, it’s easy to lose sight of the big picture – get-togethers like this one help us to regain it.

Over the past years, our branch office in Kathmandu has become a vibrant centre not only for the preservation of manuscripts but also for encounters and exchanges with local people – from politics, culture, academia, and the general public. In our image gallery, we look back on some highlights and special encounters that took place in 2023.