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A scholar uses cutting-edge technology to safeguard
the remnants of an ancient civilization
Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative
National Endowment for the Humanities: $350K
Discover Babylon
Institute
of Museum and Library Services: $500K
Not long after coalition forces seized Baghdad, word spread that
the Iraq National Museum had been looted. Suddenly the world’s
attention was focused on the precarious security of ancient artifacts
and collections.
At UCLA, Professor of Near Eastern Languages and
Cultures Robert Englund is leading an ambitious international effort
to use the
most modern media tools — computers
and the Internet — to preserve and make available to scholars around the
world the form and content of the half-million excavated cuneiform tablets left
behind by ancient peoples from approximately 3350 B.C. through the end of the
pre-Christian era. In addition, Englund and his team are working with several
partners to develop a virtual-reality game to help young museum visitors better
understand collections of ancient artifacts.
Englund and colleagues are developing an online catalogue of the
cuneiform collection of the Iraq National Museum. The project’s
goals include development of a Web site with both English and
Arabic descriptions of the archived materials and relevant educational
data, and a Web-based learning center designed to assist scholars
and non-scholars alike in gaining a deeper appreciation of the
cultural roots that can be traced to the soil of ancient Iraq,
where early civilization once flourished.
 Cuneiform
Digital Library web site
From
Distant Days (UCLA Magazine story about Englund and his work) |
