With around 90 percent of ancient cuneiform texts still untranslated, scientists are hopeful that new research into machine translation may finally help crack the code of obscure and, in many cases, extinct languages inscribed upon these clay tablets. The ingenious writing system of cuneiform was first created in Mesopotamia more than 5,000 years ago, and there is a wealth of information and history that is contained within the texts of these burned clay tablets.
As the BBC notes, the swift rise and eventual demise of civilizations in places like Assyria, Babylonia, and Akkad have all been faithfully recorded on cuneiform and this is hugely important as these civilizations were the first genuine empires to spring up in the world.
The texts inscribed into these clay tablets were first translated around 150 years ago. However, very few people today can read the ancient languages contained in cuneiform. This, according to Assyriology researcher Émilie Pagé-Perron, is where the cutting edge science of machine translation may come in.
"The influence that Mesopotamia has on our own culture is something that people don't know much about. We have information about so many different aspects of the lives of Mesopotamian people, and we can't really profit from the expertise of people in different fields like economics or politics, who if they had access to the sources, could help us tremendously to understand those societies better."
