“For thousands of years, the cuneiform writing on clay tablets from the Babylonian era remained a undecipherable mystery. It was a British Museum employee named George Smith who in 1872 became the first modern scholar to read the Epic of Gilgamesh. He died just four years later, at age 36, on a journey to the Middle East in search of more pieces of the lost poem.

Scholars have spent over 150 years following in Smith’s footsteps. Piece by piece, the story has come together as archaeologists have unearthed new cuneiform texts during excavations, museum workers have rediscovered dusty fragments forgotten in storage, and authorities have seized looted artifacts.

But in recent years, A.I. has given a major boost to their efforts. The Fragmentarium can work much faster than a human Assyriologist to translate these age-old texts from the original Sumerian and Akkadian.

Not only can this help identify missing sections of the poem, it can translate all manner of ancient Babylonian writing. Some of these surviving texts can seem mundane, but even bills of sales and other everyday records can help broaden our understanding of this ancient civilization.

Since 2018, Fragmentarium has matched lines from the epic to text from 1,500 tablet fragments. Before A.I. was put to the task, scholars had only done so for about 5,000 pieces.”

From Artnet.