Project Description

The DFG is funding a cooperative research project on the repository- and domain-spanning analysis of cuneiform tablets for the collaborative, user-centred operationalisation of philological working methods as part of the project 'Computer-assisted cuneiform analysis' (CuKa) for three years.

In the joint project of the research centre ›Corpus of Hittite Festive Rituals‹ (HFR) of the Academy of Sciences and Literature Mainz (project leader: Prof. Dr. Gerfrid G.W. Müller, Chair of Ancient Oriental Studies, Institute of Classical Studies of the Julius Maximilian University of Würzburg), the research group ›Pattern Recognition in Embedded Systems‹, Chair of Computer Science 12 (project leader: Prof. Dr.- Ing. Gernot A. Fink) and the Chair of Graphical Systems, Computer Science 7 (project leader: Dr. Frank Weichert), both at the Faculty of Computer Science at the Technical University of Dortmund, are to develop methods for automatically searching for cuneiform characters and constellations on photographs and 3D models.

The aim of the project is to provide a cooperative online visualisation and analysis system that uses deep neural networks as well as methods for two- and three-dimensional data processing to find characters and words independently of transliterations and their interpretations, while at the same time making the individual character forms available. This is of lasting importance for character lists, palaeography, author identification and joins in cuneiform research.