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Digital Cultural Heritage pp 183–194Cite as

Virtual Collection of Cuneiform Tablets as a Complex Multilevel System with Interdisciplinary Content

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Abstract

The contribution deals with the architecture of a virtual collection of cuneiform tablets, conceived as a complex system combining and integrating several domains of information obtained from various types of analyses. The collection, containing some 400 Old Assyrian tablets from the excavations of Bedřich Hrozný in Kültepe (Turkey, ancient Kanesh) and originating in a narrow chronological window (ca. 20th–19th century BCE), is a special type of pottery with additional layer of textual information in cuneiform script. The digitization of the collection includes the digital models of the artifacts (3D models, stereometric and standard photographs, Structure-from-Motion), but also additional data on individual objects (physical properties, such as dimensions, colour, shapes, composition). The textual part is made available via standard methods of corpus linguistics and philological data is grouped together for some important attributes (persons, goods, links). The data stemming from the collection is connected with external data, placing the database in the context of cultural and historical development.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The contracts in this collection are written on a clay tablet which is folded in a plate of clay (envelope); on its surface the type of the contract is mentioned, and the two contractual sides add an imprint of their personal seals [3]. An example can be found at [https://cdli.ucla.edu/dl/photo/P359969.jpg] for the tablet and [https://cdli.ucla.edu/dl/photo/P359969_e.jpg] for the envelope of the same tablet.

  2. 2.

    The editors have omitted some of the tablets, cf. [4: XXIV]. Some of them can be found in [3].

  3. 3.

    The most important being Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative [https://cdli.ucla.edu/], Open Richly Annotated Cuneiform Corpus [http://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/], Digital Hammurabi Project [http://pages.jh.edu/~dighamm/index.html]. Cf. also [http://www.cuneiform.de/]. Other projects concern with analysis issues, such as Cuneiform Analyzer [5] or GigaMesh [6]. For an advanced employment of 3D visualization cf. [7].

  4. 4.

    An example of a well-preserved tablet from our collection is [https://cdli.ucla.edu/dl/photo/P359935.jpg]; a severely damaged one can be found at [https://cdli.ucla.edu/dl/photo/P359958_e.jpg].

  5. 5.

    For the models, we currently use the equipment called TORATOM [15, 16]. Within the project, a mobile version of the equipment is being developed.

  6. 6.

    For a general overview of the current state of the art in cuneiform palaeography, cf. [22].

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Acknowledgements

The presented work is carried out within the project “Analysis, description and archivation of aggregate information on properties of cultural heritage artifacts and usage of such data in restoration, conservation and research” supported by the program of applied research and development of national and cultural identity (NAKI) of the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic—grant no. DG16P02M022.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Arts, Charles University, nám. J. Palacha 2, 11638, Prague 1, Czech Republic

    Petr Zemánek & Jana Mynářová

  2. National Museum, Václavské nám. 68, 11579, Prague 1, Czech Republic

    Petra Štefcová

  3. Institute of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics, A.S. CR, Prosecká 809/76, 19000, Prague 9, Czech Republic

    Jaroslav Valach

Authors
  1. Petr Zemánek
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  2. Jana Mynářová
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  3. Petra Štefcová
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  4. Jaroslav Valach
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Correspondence to Petr Zemánek .

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  1. CODATA-Germany, Berlin, Germany

    Horst Kremers

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Zemánek, P., Mynářová, J., Štefcová, P., Valach, J. (2020). Virtual Collection of Cuneiform Tablets as a Complex Multilevel System with Interdisciplinary Content. In: Kremers, H. (eds) Digital Cultural Heritage. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-15200-0_13

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