A.I. is finding more Gilgamesh Epic

ALGORITHM WATCH: Piecing Together an Ancient Epic Was Slow Work. Until A.I. Got Involved. Scholars have struggled to identify fragments of the epic of Gilgamesh — one of the world’s oldest literary texts. Now A.I. has brought an “extreme acceleration” to the field (Erik Ofgang, New York Times).

Now, an artificial intelligence project called Fragmentarium is helping to fill some of these gaps. Led by Enrique Jiménez, a professor at the Institute of Assyriology of the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, the Fragmentarium team uses machine learning to piece together digitized tablet fragments at a much faster pace than a human Assyriologist can. So far, A.I. has helped researchers discover new segments of Gilgamesh as well as hundreds of missing words and lines from other works. ...

Before 2018, only some 5,000 tablet fragments were matched. In the six years since, Jiménez’s team has successfully matched over 1,500 more tablet pieces, including those pertaining to a newly discovered hymn to the city of Babylon and 20 fragments from Gilgamesh that add detail to over 100 lines of the epic.

HT Todd Bolen at the Bible Places Blog.

Bit by bit, a letter at a time, whatever it takes. Until we're done.

Reconnecting cuneiform tablet fragments by shape seems to be a big part of this project. That's is a perfect task for A.I. The Fragmentarium site at the electronic Babylonian Library (eBL) is here.

For more on the Epic of Gilgamesh, and why PaleoJudaica is interested in it, with a trail of many links, start here.

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