CSMC News (2024)

On 7 January 2024, we officially launched our latest cultural heritage project in Thrissur, Kerala (India): ‘DiPiKA – Digitisation and Preservation of Kerala Archives’ aims at surveying and digitising palm-leaf manuscripts kept in private collections in Kerala.

Nepal is home to exceptionally diverse manuscript collections, both in terms of scripts and languages as well as materials used. The new episode of Bidur Bhattarai’s video series deals with preservation measures carried out at the Central Department of Nepalbhasa at Tribhuvan University.

Researchers in the Cluster of Excellence Understanding Written Artefacts and the Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron (DESY) have developed the world’s first transportable computer tomography device to read 4,000 year old cuneiform texts from Mesopotamia. It will be used in the Louvre from 1–9 February.

From 30 August to 4 September 2024, the 18th International Conference on Document Analysis and Recognition will take place in Athens. The prestigious conference also includes the 3rd Workshop on Computational Palaeography, which is co-organised by Hussein Mohammed.

Our annual winter school on ‘Cuneiform Culture and the Akkadian Language’ is coming up again: this year, it will take place from 19-23 February. The course is taught at introductory level and participation is open to students from all backgrounds.

On 25 and 26 January, a CSMC/UWA workshop on ‘Changes of Writing Substances, Implements and Supports in Manuscript Cultures’ explores the ways in which the adoption of new writing materials has repercussions on whole manuscript cultures.