Unwrapping and Visualizing Cuneiform Tablets

consider the first written language, were made in moist, clay tablets. People started making these tablets before 3400 BC and continued for more than 3,000 years. More than 100,000 tablets still exist today, in various states of disintegration. They range in size from two to dozens of centimeters. Typically, they hold administrative data, document historic events and commercial transactions, and narrate everyday life. Unfortunately, the writing used on clay tablets has evolved over time, and the evolution has contributed to a loss of the meaning of the language used. Early pictograms were written quickly and gradually evolved so that related pictograms ran together. Translating these inscribed texts has thus been difficult. In addition to translation problems, scholars of ancient writing also face the challenge of depicting the text inscribed on the cuneiform tablets when creating illustrations for use in books or research papers. We’ve developed a semiautomatic method for concisely displaying the tablets’ inscribed writing, thereby providing a clear visualization that can be printed on paper (for other approaches, see the “Previous Work” sidebar). We first scan the tablets with 3D range scanners and use the scan data to construct a high-resolution 3D model (at a resolution of 50 microns). Next, we unwrap and warp the tablet surface to form a set of flat rectangles, one per side or edge of the tablet. This process permits all the writing to be seen at once, although necessarily slightly distorted. Finally, we apply curvature coloring and accessibility coloring to the unwrapped text, thereby replacing raking illumination with a nonphotorealistic rendering technique.