Database to ease study of ancient tablets

  Courtesy of Robert K. Englund This cuneiform tablet,
discovered in southern Iraq, consists of an archaic list of 58
different pig designations and is dated at 3000 BC.

By Bimal Rajkomar
Daily Bruin Reporter

To study the ancient civilizations of Mesopotamia, scholars once
had to scour rows upon rows of cumbersome clay tablets piled away
in back rooms of museums across the globe.

But now, thanks to one of the largest humanities grants to UCLA
by the National Science Foundation, $650,000, researchers will be
able to access an online database of collections of cuneiform, an
ancient form of writing.

“The idea is to make collections available from New Haven
to Calcutta to Los Angeles,” said Robert Englund, professor
of Near Eastern languages and cultures who studies the economics of
Mesopotamia.

The availability of texts, he hopes, will further the study of
ancient cultures for linguists, anthropologists and historians.

In three years, the Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative will
feature digital images of at least 60,000 tablets and tablet
fragments from the period of the early development of
cuneiform.

The online access facilitates the collection of old records
because many tablets have been spread around the world. Many texts
were stolen from excavation sites to be sold on the black market,
or even those recovered properly were shipped to museums
worldwide.

They have been dispersed so widely that collectors can purchase
tablets for several hundred dollars on eBay.

The distribution of tablets has led to the primary problem in
studying old texts ““ the records for a given period and
location may be in different parts of the world.

“Tablets were sent to all corners of the world, and their
context was ruined,” Englund said.

To add to the problem of distribution, the aftermath of the Gulf
War lead to increasing thefts.

“In the confusion of the social upheaval in Iraq, some had
to feed their children (with money) from stolen tablets,”
Englund said.

Cuneiform was developed from pictograms, and was used as a
recordkeeping system 5,000 years ago in Assyria, Babylonia and
Sumeria.

“Cuneiform is a window to the development of the ancient
civilizations, as well as a window to our own,” said William
Schniedewind, acting chair of the Near Eastern languages and
cultures department.

Cuneiform does not represent a particular language, but is a
recordkeeping system used in several languages.

Englund said UCLA’s support was instrumental in getting
funding

“It’s important in this era to demonstrate the value of
humanities to a broader audience,” said Elisabeth Johnson,
director of north campus strategic research initiatives.

She added that UCLA encourages interdisciplinary studies by
combining humanities and social sciences with south campus
research.

The NSF grant comes from the Digital Libraries Initiative, a
federal program devoted to “providing high-tech solutions to
research problems in the humanities,” according to the
project’s Web site.

The importance of the project was the primary reason that one
graduate student in particular transferred to UCLA from the
University of Copenhagen last year.

“No other project in our field holds so much promise for
progress in our understanding of the social history of the ancient
Near East,” said Near Eastern languages and cultures graduate
student Jacob Dahl.

UCLA staff and graduate students will train personnel at the
Louvre and British Museum to digitize their collections.

Englund started the digital dissemination of ancient texts in
1984 in Berlin. His decision to come to the U.S. was due in part to
the knowledge that there was a possibility for the funding of his
research.

“The idea was borne from my work in Berlin, dedicated to
the electronic dissemination of ancient texts,” Englund
said.

Englund hopes to continue the project for up to 10 years. The
Web site is available at http://www.cdli.ucla.edu.