Latest news with #cuneiform
Yahoo
5 days ago
- Science
- Yahoo
Scientists Reconstructed a Babylonian Hymn Lost for Over 1,000 Years
Here's what you'll learn when you read this story: A Babylonian hymn lost for over a thousand years was rediscovered. Experts pieced together the hymn using an AI model to decipher hundreds of cuneiform tablets in a Baghdad library. The library's tablets were only preserved in fragments, requiring the difficult process of stitching the individual fragments together. Legend has it that Noah tucked away Babylonian cuneiform writings on clay tablets before the great flood over 4,000 years ago. Researchers just discovered a tablet writing in the same style, a hymn written in honor of Babylon that was lost a millennium ago. They were able to decipher it with a little help from AI. In a study published in the journal Iraq, a team of researchers from the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (LMU) and the University of Baghdad scoured the Sippar Library's collection of hundreds of fragments of cuneiform tablets to rediscover the hymn to Babylon. 'Using our AI-supported platform, we managed to identify 30 other manuscripts that belong to the rediscovered hymn—a process that would formerly have taken decades,' Enrique Jiménez, professor of Ancient Near Eastern Literature at LMU's Institute of Assyriology, said in a translated statement. 'Thanks to these additional texts, the scholars were able to completely decipher the hymn of praise on the clay tablet, parts of which were missing.' Founded in Mesopotamia around 2,000 B.C., Babylon was, at one time, the largest city in the world. The metropolis was a cultural hub, and its intellectuals produced plenty of writing, much of which were done on clay tablets. Jiménez is working on a project to digitize all cuneiform text fragments discovered worldwide and then used AI to decipher which pieces belonged together. Finding so many copies of an original hymn showed that it was a popular text in its time. 'The hymn was copied by children at school,' Jiménez said. 'It's unusual that such a popular text in its day was unknown to us before now. It's a fascinating hymn that describes Babylon in all its majesty and gives insights into the lives of its inhabitants, male and female.' The study authors said that the hymn includes unparalleled descriptions of the healing powers of Marduk (the patron deity of Babylon), the splendor of Babylon, the the Euphrates River in the spring, and the generosity of the Babylonians. 'The author of this highly accomplished piece immortalized his devotion to his city, gods, and people in words that resonated until the final decades of cuneiform culture,' the study authors wrote. The 250-line song is believed to be from the early days of the first millennium. 'It was written by a Babylonian who wanted to praise his city,' Jiménez said. 'The author describes the buildings in the city, but also how the waters of the Euphrates bring the spring and green the fields. This is all the more spectacular as surviving Mesopotamian literature is sparing in its descriptions of natural phenomena.' The song includes details about the life of women in Babylon, including roles as priestesses and the tasks they performed. There are no other known texts describing this information. Jiménez said that the hymns also provide insight into an urban society shown being respectful to foreigners. According to the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, the following lines are from the newly discovered hymn describing the river Euphrates, where the historic Babylon was at the time, now at UNESCO World Heritage Site about 52 miles from the current Iraq capital of Baghdad. The translated lines: The Euphrates is her river—established by wise lord Nudimmud— It quenches the lea, saturates the canebrake, Disgorges its waters into lagoon and sea, Its fields burgeon with herbs and flowers, Its meadows, in brilliant bloom, sprout barley, From which, gathered, sheaves are stacked, Herds and flocks lie on verdant pastures, Wealth and splendor—what befit mankind— Are bestowed, multiplied, and regally granted You Might Also Like The Do's and Don'ts of Using Painter's Tape The Best Portable BBQ Grills for Cooking Anywhere Can a Smart Watch Prolong Your Life?
The Sun
02-07-2025
- Science
- The Sun
AI deciphers hymn on 4,000-year-old clay tablet to unlock mystery of ancient city of Babylon
AN ANCIENT hymn lost for 4,000 years on a Babylonian tablet has finally been deciphered using artificial intelligence (AI). Advances in technology made the discovery possible in a fraction of the time, according to a new study. 5 5 5 Without AI, it would have taken decades to decode. The text, inscribed on an ancient tablet, is from Babylon, Mesopotamia - once the largest city in the world in 2000 BCE. Babylonian texts were composed in cuneiform, the oldest form of writing, on clay tablets. But they have only survived in fragments, meaning their messages are hard to decipher. After digitising a selection of ancient texts, researchers at the University of Baghdad and Ludwig Maximilian University (LMU) of Munich, uncovered an ancient hymn they believe Babylon residents would have sung. "Using our AI-supported platform, we managed to identify 30 other manuscripts that belong to the rediscovered hymn—a process that would formerly have taken decades," said Enrique Jiménez, professor of Ancient Near Eastern Literatures at LMU's Institute of Assyriology. Although parts of these texts were missing, scholars were still able to completely decipher the hymn of praise. "It's a fascinating hymn that describes Babylon in all its majesty and gives insights into the lives of its inhabitants, male and female," added Jiménez. Researchers believe children would have studied the hymn, which is comprised of 250 lines of text, at school. Numerous copies of the hymn have been found inscribed on clay tablets from the era. "The hymn was copied by children at school. It's unusual that such a popular text in its day was unknown to us before now," said Jiménez. "It was written by a Babylonian who wanted to praise his city. "The author describes the buildings in the city, but also how the waters of the Euphrates bring the spring and green the fields. "This is all the more spectacular as surviving Mesopotamian literature is sparing in its descriptions of natural phenomena." Excerpt from the ancient hymn Here are some lines from the newly discovered hymn of praise: "The Euphrates is her river - established by wise lord Nudimmud - "It quenches the lea, saturates the canebrake, "Disgorges its waters into lagoon and sea, "Its fields burgeon with herbs and flowers, "Its meadows, in brilliant bloom, sprout barley, "From which, gathered, sheaves are stacked, "Herds and flocks lie on verdant pastures, "Wealth and splendour - what befit mankind - "Are bestowed, multiplied, and regally granted." The ruins of the ancient city of Babylon, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, are located some 85 km south of the Iraqi capital of Baghdad. Beyond the city and its pastures, the hymn also reveals new details about the lives of women in Babylon. Women had roles as priestesses, which were described as being particularly virtuous. They were praised in the hymn for their devotion and discretion. Priestesses were famously celibate, and were among the professions established to to keep the population's birth rate under control. Their "partners", mentioned in the hymn, are understood to be the gods they are devoted to. The hymn also offers insights into the melding of different cultures in the early urban society. For example, the inhabitants are described as being respectful to foreigners. While researchers have uncovered unprecedented detail about ancient Babylon, there are more secrets to uncover. Roughly 100 lines of the hymn's ending are still missing or mutilated, according to the study, so it is difficult to decipher what they might have contained. 5 5
Times
02-07-2025
- Science
- Times
Hymn of Babylon pieced together after 2,100 years — but how?
In the dying days of Babylon, about 100BC, as the remnants of the city's former splendour crumbled around them, its young scribes would study a thousand-year-old poem about the marvel that their civilisation had once been. Set at the dawn of creation, the hymn to the god Marduk described a verdant paradise of flowering meadows nourished by the River Euphrates, a sacred metropolis with jewelled gates 'flourishing in her charms like a garden of fruit'. This lost classic of Mesopotamian literature has now largely been reconstructed by scholars, who used artificial intelligence to piece together fragments of 30 ancient clay tablets. The hymn's origins are obscure but a fleeting reference to tolerance for foreign exiles suggests it may have been written before the 13th century BC. That would put it a little before the Trojan war and about the same time as the youngest parts of the Epic of Gilgamesh, the oldest long poem known to modernity. It vanished into the sands after Babylon was conquered by Alexander the Great in 331BC, yet numerous scattered fragments of it survived to the present in the ruins of Sippar, a city that was once about 40 miles to the north of Babylon. According to legend, Noah used the site to preserve a treasury of manuscripts from the great flood. Since the end of the 19th century, excavations at Sippar have yielded a vast library of thousands of tablets covered in cuneiform script. Those tablets are being digitised and reassembled with help from algorithms by researchers at Ludwig Maximilian University (LMU) in Munich and the University of Baghdad. The song of Marduk, which originally consisted of about 250 lines, has been restored to about two thirds of its original length. • Villa of the Mysteries digs expose Pompeii's tomb-raiding riddle Enrique Jiménez, a professor of ancient oriental languages at LMU, said it belonged to a handful of Babylonian poems that seemed to have been fixtures in the school curriculum, such as the national creation epic, Marduk's Address to the Demons and the Poem of the Righteous Sufferer. 'Very few texts qualify as 'classics' in the sense of being widely used for scribal education,' he said. 'What unites these texts is their focus on Babylon and its patron god Marduk — essentially, they were tools to teach or even indoctrinate students about the city's greatness and its divine centre.' In Jiménez's view, its carefully nested structure suggests it was the work of a single author, rather than a composite of accreted traditions like Gilgamesh. 'The hymn's structure is very attractive: a natural-feeling mise en abyme where each section elegantly contains the next,' he said. 'The rhythmic precision is also very sophisticated. Some manuscripts even show metrical scansion, which is uncommon.' • Did ancient sunscreen change human history? The poem opens with a lofty barrage of praise to Marduk, 'bright torch of the great gods' and 'architect of the universe', who commands the great floods in the distant mountains and brings life to the plains of the Euphrates. It then moves on to a description of spring floods that Jiménez said was unparalleled in its vividness, since Babylonian poets did not usually waste much breath on the wonders of nature. The city itself is portrayed as a paragon of almost social-democratic charity: 'The foreigners among them they do not humiliate. The humble they protect, the weak they support. Under their care, the poor and destitute can thrive. To the orphan they offer succour and favour.' By the time the last copies were written in the 1st or 2nd century BC, the poem would have been a bittersweet echo of everything the Babylonians had lost. 'Cuneiform documents from this period are scarce compared to earlier times, and the script eventually disappeared around the turn of the eras,' Jiménez said. 'This text must have served as a reminder of Babylon's past glories during its twilight.' The poem is published in an article by Jiménez and Anmar A Fadhil, an Iraqi colleague, in the journal Iraq.
Times
02-07-2025
- Science
- Times
Rediscovery of Babylon epic poem is a reason to cheer AI
An artist's impression of Babylon ALAMY 'Like the sea, Babylon proffers her yield / Like a garden of fruit, she flourishes in her charms / Like a wave, her swell brings her bounties rolling in.' These words, written around 3,000 years ago, were known by heart by people in the Babylonian empire for centuries. They have just been recovered with the help of AI. The words form part of a 250-line poem deciphered from fragments of hundreds of cuneiform tablets discovered in the library of Sippar, a lost city 40 miles north of Baghdad. Without AI, says Professor Enrique Jiménez, of Ludwig-Maximilians University, the joint Iraqi- German project would have taken decades. • Inside the library where cutting-edge tech is unlocking the secrets of ancient scrolls Dating from 300 years before the Iliad and the Odyssey, the poem was recovered from 30 separate manuscripts written over a 600-year period. This suggests that it was a work of great importance, possibly the Babylonian equivalent of Greece's Homeric hymns and Rome's Aeneid. Indeed, it appears to have been on the Babylonian school curriculum, some of the research sources being schoolchildren's tablets. Such texts were learned by heart at the time. That's partly why the find is so exciting: it's unusual for such a significant piece of literature to be lost and then to resurface. But the poem is also a powerful literary work, using vivid language reminiscent of the Psalms to bring the city and its fertile agricultural hinterland to life. And it reveals some fascinating features of Babylonian society, such as the importance of women priests and the respect accorded to foreigners. Humanity is understandably alarmed by AI's potential to shake contemporary civilisation to its foundations, and so tends to focus on the threats it may pose. But it is important also to remember its many upsides, such as its potential for revealing the lost cultural riches of ancient civilisation. Like fruitful Babylon, AI has much to yield.
