Some ancient scribes pressed harder into wet clay. Others left tiny flourishes behind when lifting their stylus from the tablet surface. More than 3,000 years later, those habits are helping researchers recognize individual writers again.
Researchers studying cuneiform tablets from the Hittite Empire have developed an AI-powered tool capable of identifying handwriting patterns across millions of ancient signs, helping scholars reconnect shattered tablet fragments and distinguish one scribe’s work from another.
The system, called the Palaeographicum, currently has access to more than five million cuneiform characters preserved across roughly 70,000 photographs. It can isolate individual cuneiform symbols from tablet photographs and group together signs written in similar styles, allowing scholars to compare handwriting patterns side by side.
“The Palaeographicum is radically changing our work; it allows us to save thousands of hours,” said Daniel Schwemer, head of the Department of Ancient Near Eastern Studies at the University of Würzburg, in a press release.
AI Is Reconnecting Ancient Clay Tablets Faster Than Humans Can
Cuneiform ranks among the world’s oldest writing systems. Scribes pressed wedge-shaped symbols into wet clay tablets with styluses, creating records documenting rituals, trade, politics, and daily life across the ancient Near East.
Many of those tablets later broke apart, scattering fragments across museums around the world. Reconstructing them has become a challenge. Depending on the angle of light, some cuneiform characters can also become difficult to read in photographs.
Researchers at the University of Würzburg and the Academy of Sciences and Literature in Mainz have spent years developing digital tools to help solve that problem, particularly for texts associated with the Hittites, an Anatolian civilization whose writing system comprised roughly 375 signs.
Comparing handwriting across five clay tablet fragments once took researchers three days. With the new system, it can now be done in about five minutes.
Read More: Decoding Cuneiform, One of the Earliest Forms of Writing
Tiny Handwriting Quirks Can Reveal Entire Histories
Because handwriting styles changed over time, the system may help scholars estimate when undated tablets were produced. That could provide new ways to reconstruct timelines in the ancient Near East, where many tablets contain no date.
The project also builds on decades of digital work in Hittite studies. Twenty-five years ago, researchers launched the Hethitologie-Portal Mainz, an online archive that now catalogs roughly 30,000 Hittite clay tablet fragments, along with research materials and texts.
Over time, the team added tools capable of capturing cuneiform signs in 3D and digitally searching cuneiform texts. The Palaeographicum is the latest step in that effort.
Researchers Hope AI Can Eventually Reconstruct Scribes’ Careers
The AI model behind the Palaeographicum grew out of a project called Computer-assisted cuneiform analysis, or CuKa, developed between 2018 and 2023 in collaboration with the Technical University of Dortmund.
The team is still retraining the AI and refining the system based on feedback from scholars working in Hittitology.
That work may prove difficult because scribes likely varied their handwriting depending on the circumstances, writing more carefully in calm settings and more hastily when documenting inspections or official travel across the Hittite Empire.
The ability to identify individual scribes could eventually help scholars trace who copied certain texts, how writing styles evolved, and how professional scribes worked across different stages of their lives.
“If we achieve this goal, we could gain a better picture of what individual scribes produced over the course of their professional careers,” Schwemer said, “and we could compile a social history of Hittite writing culture.”
Read More: How the Mesopotamians Wrote About Their Feelings Gives Us Insight into Their Ancient World
Article Sources
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- This article references information from the University of Würzburg: Palaeographicum
