By Mirage News
Publication Date: 2026-05-18 06:48:00
The new AI tool “Palaeographicum” revolutionizes the study of ancient Near Eastern cultures: It identifies individual variations of cuneiform characters – a major advance for science.
In the three millennia before our era, a highly developed civilization flourished in the Middle East, leaving behind a wealth of information: on clay tablets with cuneiform writing. In this writing system, wedge-shaped characters were pressed with a pen into moist clay tablets, which were then dried – this created a durable written document.
Most clay tablets have broken over time and their fragments are scattered in museums around the world. Ancient Near Eastern studies are therefore faced with a complex task: they have to put the fragments back together correctly. Only then is it possible to read the complete documents and gain insights into life in the Ancient Near East.
Researchers from the University of Würzburg and the Academy of Sciences and Literature in Mainz have been working on…
