AI is helping researchers to read ancient Mesopotamian literature

[… who s]aw the Deep, […] the country,

[who] knew […], […] all […] [… who] saw the Deep, […] the country, [who] knew […], […] all […] This first quote represents the beginning of the Epic of Gilgamesh as known from the 19th century onwards . The following one shows the text fully restored, in the form it achieved over 100 years later, when a new fragment of it was published in 2007 . He who saw the Deep, the foundation of the country, who knew the proper ways, was wise in all matters!

Gilgamesh, who saw the Deep, the foundation of the country, who knew the proper ways, was wise in all matters! Throughout the twentieth century, only the fragmentary version of the prologue of the epic was known. Generations of readers, when first confronted with the foremost classic of ancient Mesopotamian literature, experienced the frustration of reading a fragmentary text, of being allowed only a latticed glimpse into the world of the Babylonians. The original text was written in cuneiform, the most widespread and historically significant writing system in the ancient Middle East. Its name comes from the wedge-shaped impressions (in Latin, cuneus ) that form its signs.

Tablet V of the Epic of Gilgamesh located in the The Sulaymaniyah Museum, Iraq. Credit: Osama Shukir Muhammed Amin FRCP/Wikimedia Commons , CC BY-SA Read more

Manuscript NipNB1 (IM.77087) of Advice to a Prince (Photograph by Anmar A. Fadhil, by permission of the State Board of Antiquities and Heritage and The Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago). Credit: Electronic Babylonian Library, Author provided Read more

Reconstruction of the manuscript K.4981+ from nine discrete fragments previously transliterated in the Fragmentarium. Author provided Read more