ENCI at Work in Ankara

2 October 2024

Photo: Davidson MacLaren

The ENCI team at the Museum of Anatolian Civilisations in Ankara. From left to right: Samaneh Ehteram (UWA/DESY), Christian Schroer (UWA/DESY), Andreas Schropp (DESY), Katrin Zerbe (DESY), Andreas Beckert, and Cécile Michel (UWA).

ENCI, the world’s first mobile CT scanner for analysing cultural heritage objects, is on its second major field mission: At the Museum of Anatolian Civilisations in Ankara, Türkiye, researchers are looking inside sealed cuneiform tablets. But this time, they also use the method to study other objects.

Ancient Mesopotamia is considered the cradle of civilisation – and the birthplace of writing. This outstanding cultural achievement enabled the development of complex legal systems and a sophisticated bureaucratic administration of the ancient cities. What we know today about this early advanced civilisation is thanks to the cuneiform tablets that have been preserved since ancient times. Some of them are over 5,000 years old, making them the first and longest-lasting written documents in the world. Around two-thirds of the period of human history for which records exist is documented in the form of cuneiform tablets.

The Museum of Anatolian Civilisations in Ankara houses a particularly important collection of cuneiform tablets. They come from various historical sites in Anatolia, including Hattusa and Kültepe, one of the earliest cuneiform archives in the region. In addition to contracts, legal documents, and religious texts, the collection also includes numerous private letters. This makes it an invaluable source of knowledge about the economic, political, and social conditions of the time.

However, many texts on these clay tablets are still unknown because the tablets are still in their original clay envelopes – for example because a letter could not be delivered or was lost on the journey to its recipient, which sometimes covered thousands of kilometres. This presents Assyriologists with a dilemma: on the one hand, they have a great historical interest in the enclosed texts; on the other hand, they must not destroy the clay envelopes – many of them have imprints of cylinder seals on their surface, which present miniature scenes, making them cultural heritage objects in their own right.

Photo: CSMC

Enclosed cuneiform tablets at the Museum of Anatolian Civilisations.

Photo: CSMC

Museum director Yusuf Kiraç and the vice director Umut Alagoz are testing the rendering of tablets on the 3D screen.

Photo: CSMC

During the measurements: The researchers can see a reconstruction of the enclosed tabelt on their screen.

The ENCI team is currently on site at the museum in Ankara for its second major field mission. ENCI (Extracting Non-destructively Cuneiform Inscriptions) was developed jointly by the Cluster of Excellence Understanding Written Artefacts and Deutsches Elektronensynchrotron (DESY). It is the world’s first mobile device that can be used to look inside the sealed clay tablets and reconstruct the hidden texts. Thanks to its lightweight design, ENCI can be used in museums and archives themselves – the cuneiform tablets, which often cannot be transported, thus remain in their protected environment. In February 2024, this new method was successfully tested in the field for the first time when UWA and DESY researchers examined cuneiform tablets in the Louvre.

In addition to Assyriologists and X-ray physicists, the ENCI team also includes computer scientists, who produce 3D animations of the hidden tablets. This not only makes it possible to read the texts, but also to gain deep insights into the materiality of the clay being examined. In Ankara, the researchers were already able to identify the remains of various organic materials in the clay envelopes, including peas, lentils, snails, and shells – apparently, merchants in particular did not always pay attention to the highest quality when it came to their writing materials. It remains to be seen what other secrets the images will reveal once the analysis of the considerable amounts of data has been completed.

The measuring time during this field trip is not used solely for cuneiform tablets from the collection of the Museum of Anatolian Civilisations. The trip also offers an opportunity for collaboration with local colleagues, including Assyriologists from Ankara University, who can have objects of particular interest to them examined using ENCI. Anthropologists can also use the method: Several human bones kept in the Kayseri Museum have already been analysed by the ENCI team during this trip in order to understand different pathologies. This measurement is the latest in a series of recent attempts to use ENCI to research a variety of objects.

Latest articles

Liturgical book displayed on a book cradle by an Ethiopian orthodox priest. The unsupported sewing structure of the manuscript allows it to be opened at a wide angle. Lalibela, Monastery of Naʾakkʷǝto Laʾab.

Photo: Alan Davey

21.03.2025|CSMC News

Material Choices in Written Artefacts

The production of each written artefact is connected to a series of decisions about which materials to choose and which techniques to use to craft them. A new Occasional Paper provides an overview of a dynamic new research field at the UWA Cluster of Excellence that investigates material choices.

Photo: NLI

19.03.2025|CSMC News

NLI and UWA Provide Remote Access to Archival Material

Together with the National Library of Israel (NLI), UWA has digitised the estates of important Jewish-German intellectuals. These archives as well as further material can now be accessed online remotely for the first time.