First use in the Louvre in ParisUsing the World’s First Mobile Computer Tomography Device to Decipher Hidden Texts

25 January 2024

Photo: Karsten Helmholz

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.

Cuneiform tablets from ancient Mesopotamia in the Middle East are the oldest written artifacts in the world. To protect the information written on them, in 3,000 BCE people began enclosing them in envelopes made of clay. Some of these were never opened, for example, if they never arrived at their intended destination, with the result that today, many museums around the world have sealed cuneiform tablets in their archives.

Now, researchers in the Cluster of Excellence Understanding Written Artefacts (UWA) at Universität Hamburg, and the Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron (DESY) have developed the world’s first computer tomography device that can read these sealed tablets. ENCI (Extracting Non-destructively Cuneiform Inscriptions) thus opens up a wealth of previously inaccessible sources for the study of antiquity.     

‘People like me, who research the history of Mesopotamia have always been always frustrated by the fact that there are so many cuneiform tablets that have existed for over thousands of years, but we still can’t read them’, says Cécile Michel, one of the project leaders. ‘Personal letters give us new insights into daily life and the living conditions of people at the time. For contracts, often, the most important content is summarized on the outside of the envelope, so we already know something about the text inside. But this also raises many questions: what information was included on the envelope and which not? How does the text inside differ from that on the outside, and why?’

• Read the full interview ith Cécile Michel: ‘ENCI Gives Us Access to a Wealth of Source Material’

Using X-rays, ENCI creates many individual layers to present an image of the cuneiform tablet and its envelope. The computer shows the empty space between the tablet and the envelope on every individual image. Putting the images together reveals the surface of the cuneiform tables inside the envelope, including the writing on them.

‘Normally, a tomography device with the required radiation intensity weighs several tons’, explains Christian Schroer, who headed the development of the ENCI. ‘The most important thing for us was that the device could be moved, because few museums want to send their collection elsewhere. ENCI weighs only just over 400 kilograms. The biggest challenge was ensuring that the required radiation intensity could be achieved while keeping the weight down.’  

• Read the full interview with Christian Schroer: ‘The Challenge is to Combine Lightweight Construction and Radiation Protection’

Researchers from UWA and DESY will use it to examine cuneiform tables from the Louvre in Paris from 1–9 February 2024. The museum has around 12,000 tablets, making it one of the most important collections in the world. Initially, a dozen tablets have been selected for examination. Most of these come from southern Iraq.