Dear Readers
At a Glance: Upcoming CSMC Events
18 September: Workshop: Large Language Models for Research Data Management?!
9 October: Thursday Lecture: Jonatan Ortiz Garcia
10–11 October: Workshop: ‘Second Hands’ and ‘Second Thoughts’ in Music: Multilayered Written Artefacts of 19th- and 20th-century Austrian and German Music
23 October: Thursday Lecture: Roberta Mazza: Ethics in Manuscript Studies
24–25 October: Workshop: Translation Choices in Multilingual Written Artefacts
5–7 November: DFG Network: Working Wonders with Words: Language and Power in the Pre-Modern World between Religion, Magic and Medicine
13–15 November: Workshop: Tracing and Untangling the Marginalisation of Women in Mesopotamian Temples
11–12 December: Workshop: Inscribing Domestic Spaces
news
Structuring Rilke: Collaboration with the German Literature Archive
When the German Literature Archive (DLA) in Marbach acquired the complete literary estate of Rainer Maria Rilke at the end of 2022, it was considered a sensation. However, digitising these manuscripts poses great challenges: conventional text recognition programmes are overwhelmed by Rilke’s complex and visually extraordinary notebooks. As part of a pilot project involving 56 notebooks from the estate, Hussein Mohammed and Quang Vinh-Dang from the Visual Manuscript Analysis Lab have developed AI-based tools that enable automated structuring. The system detects and catalogues visual features such as colours, directions of writing, or writing instruments. The results are ‘Computational Visual Catalogues’ and the innovative software ‘ScriptSight’, which open up new ways of accessing the Rilke estate. Beyond Rilke scholarship, this method holds great potential for the exploration of other archival collections as well.
Mesopotamian Bulletins: New Episodes Online
In ancient Mesopotamia, solar eclipses were considered a sign of impending doom. To prevent them from becoming an omen of the end of their reign, the rulers of the time devised a cruel ruse, as Assyriologist Cécile Michel recounts in a new instalment of her blog ‘Mesopotamian Bulletins’. For over ten years, this blog has been collecting stories from everyday life in ancient high culture, current research, and the recent circumstances and developments in the countries where the excavation sites are located. We regularly translate selected episodes into English. Eleven new episodes are now available on our website.
‘I hereby let you know that I am doing well so far’
A yellowed photo shows five men in a forest. They are wearing uniforms, looking seriously at the camera. The back of the photograph is densely written in pencil. However, the text has faded so much that only a few fragments can still be deciphered. More than 100 years later, the grandson of one of the men in the photo wants to read the message to get a better understanding of the wartime experiences of his grandfather, and contacts the Artefact Lab of the CSMC.
Vacant Research Associate Position
We are looking for a doctoral researcher in the field of Computer Science for the Visual Manuscript Analysis Lab (VMA). The position is full-time and fixed-term, with a duration of three and a half years (1 January 2026 to 30 June 2029). The succesful candidate will contribute to the research activities of the VMA lab, including meetings, seminars, and collaborative projects within the UWA Cluster of Excellence. The candidate will be a part of the cluster’s Graduate School and participate actively in its colloquia and collaborative research networks.
PhD Research Series
How Books Shape Social Practices
In 19th-century Damascus, Khālid al-Naqshabandī, a Sufi and a mystical leader, built a library that became a centre for scholarly exchange in his time. Later, its preservation required legal ingenuity on the part of his heirs, until it was eventually scattered around the world. Joud Nassan Agha takes a closer look at this library, its place in the intellectual life of Damascus, and its later history. The article is richly illustrated with images by Naser Nassan Agha.
