Lichtgedanken 04

S C HW E R P U N K T 26 They are relics of a bygone era—the cuneiform script tablets from Mesopotamia. Relics that are as much a part of the heri­ tage of humankind as the pyramids of Giza or the Mayan temples. The German-American scholar Volrath Hilprecht (1859-1925) put together an important collection of these cuneiform script tablets as well as other artefacts. This collec- tion is now known as the Hilprecht Collection of Near Eastern Antiquities and is one of the most valuable collections at Jena University. The Hilprecht Collection is the second-largest of its kind in Germany; exceeded only by the collection in the Vorderasiatisches Museum in Berlin. The collection is also of great importance worldwide: many of the objects can now only be found in collections in Baghdad, London, Paris, Phi­ ladelphia and Yale. At home in the Jena Hilprecht Collection— freely accessible across the globe »We don’t want to hide the collection; instead we want to make it digitally accessible to everyone«, says Prof. Dr Man- fred Krebernik. The holder of the Chair of Ancient Near East- ern Studies is like the master of the Hilprecht Collection, which encompasses around 3,300 exhibits. Some of the exhi­ bits are already accessible via the »CDLI« (Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative) online portal. This website is a joint project between the University of California, Los Angeles, the Uni- versity of Oxford and the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin. Originally, the plan was to only record the oldest cuneiform script texts from the 4th/3rd century BC; these pieces from the Hilprecht Collection were scanned using conventional methods prior to 1999/2000. In 2009, together with the Max Planck Institute for the His- tory of Science (MPI) in Berlin, work began on digitalizing the entire collection using 3D scanning technology. The extensive project was sparked during a research visit by Prof. Krebernik to the MPI. »It was Peter Damerow’s idea«, says Manfred Krebernik. The science historian, who died in 2011, was ex- tremely interested in the cuneiform script texts. The Hilprecht Collection is quite special compared with other collections: it contains a multitude of scientific and literary texts; includ- ing several precursors to the Gligamesh Epic and the oldest known map of a city in the world. This map of Nippur from the late second century BC is one of the most valuable exhibits within the collection. »The city of Nippur was one of the most important settlements in Mesopotamia prior to Babylon«, says Prof. Krebernik. Nippur was the special seat of worship for the highest Sumerian god Enlil; there must also have been many important scribal schools, as the vast majority of Sumerian lit- erary works that have survived are from Nippur. The content of the clay tablets found there suggest that they were used to study the cuneiform script and ancient traditions. In 1889, a team at the University of Pennsylvania—which Her- mann Hilprecht belonged to as a philologist—began excavat- ing. Numerous findings ended up in the Imperial Museum in Istanbul, now the Archaelogical Museum (Istanbul Arkeoloji Müzesi). Hilprecht, who was a friend of the family of the mu- seum founder Osman Hamdi Bey, procured numerous pieces or was given them as gifts. He bequeathed his collection to the University of Jena in 1925. The collection was extended with pieces that botanist Heinrich Carl Haussknecht brought back from his research trips and that the Orientalist Arthur Ungnad procured. In addition to the cuneiform script tablets, which make up the largest part of the collection, it includes small archaeological findings from the Ancient Orient (e.g. terracotta, needles, styluses and other instruments), so-called magic bowls with incantations in the Aramaic language and Ottoman wall tiles. The artefacts are recorded using a special 3D scanner. Two laser beams simultaneously scan the surface to capture mul- tiple recordings. The researchers use a computer programme Laser beam meets antique clay tablets They were a common means of communication in ancient Mesopotamia: clay tablets upon which people engraved their texts in cuneiform script over 5,000 years ago. Everyday correspondence, as well as scientific and literary texts, have thus been retained to this day. The Hilprecht Collection at the University of Jena encompasses over 3,000 pieces of text alone. These precious relics have been digitalized using laser techno­ logy over recent years and will soon be accessible to the public online. BY STEPHAN LAUDIEN Prof. Dr Manfred Krebernik is studying one of over 3,000 cuneiform script tablets from the Jena Hilprecht Collection. F E AT U R E