German researchers develop Palaeographicum AI to decode broken Hittite tablets
A new AI tool called Palaeographicum, created by researchers in Germany, is making it way easier to decode ancient cuneiform tablets from the Hittite civilization.
These clay tablets are mostly broken and used to take days to analyze, but now the AI can scan thousands of images and recognize tiny details in just minutes.
By picking up on scribes' unique writing quirks and patterns, it's helping researchers piece together lost stories from over three millennia ago.
Palaeographicum aims to spot scribes' handwriting
Palaeographicum was built with help from the Technical University of Dortmund as part of a big research project.
The team is now aiming to teach it to spot individual scribes' handwriting styles—which could reveal how writing evolved within Hittite writing culture and across individual scribes' careers.
Scholars are calling this tool a game-changer because it speeds up research and opens up fresh ways to understand our distant past.