Extending Philological Research with Methods of 3D Computer Graphics Applied to Analysis of Cultural Heritage

Philological research on ancient cuneiform texts with the goal of analyzing and reconstructing manuscripts from a large quantity of available unsorted tablet fragments is a time consuming task. As the number of tablet fragments and the number of signs on the fragments both exceed values which can be handled by means of conventional manual research methods in a reasonable amount of time, the use of computer aided research methods is an obvious choice. In this paper, we present a novel unified approach for integrating methods of computer graphics into the process of analyzing and joining cuneiform tablet fragments. We will cover a selection of essential research scenarios and identify aspects where those methods can be applied to enhance and extend traditional philological research processes or even help to access formerly unavailable layers of information. This is achieved by integrating methods for visualization, interactive 3D script feature extraction, script analysis, virtual fragment joining and intuitive measurement and annotation tools in our fast and easy to use software framework CuneiformAnalyser, designed for large data sets. Unlike other approaches, our solution integrates for the first time methods to support every aspect of the manuscript analysis and reconstruction process in a single system.