Project

From the 21st Century BC to the 21st Century AD. New Methodological Approaches for the Analysis of a Corpus of Unpublished Cuneiform Tablets

Code
3F024920
Duration
01 November 2020 → 31 October 2025
Funding
Research Foundation - Flanders (FWO)
Research disciplines
  • Humanities and the arts
    • Archaeology of Australia, Asia, Africa, and the Americas
    • Ancient history
    • Middle Eastern history
    • Middle Eastern languages
Keywords
Mesopotamia Social Network Ana Sumerian Textual Encoding Akkadian Assyriology History of Ancient Near East Cuneiform Writing Digital Humanities History Archaeology
 
Project description

This research project aims to enhance the traditional methodologies of textual analysis by leveraging the potential of digital methodologies to study 210 unpublished cuneiform tablets from the Ur III period (2112-2004 BC). The corpus of tablets, currently kept at Ghent University, lacks archaeological context and precise dating, which restricts the efficacy of traditional philological methods. To overcome these limitations, the project will integrate various digital methodologies, including  Social Network Analysis (SNA), Reflectance Transformation Imaging (RTI), 3D scanning, and Computer Tomography, to analyze the texts comprehensively and efficiently.