Questions

Research questions are the building block of our platform of scientific inquiry. Key questions are the ones at the heart of a mystery; every other question helps answer one of them.

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Unread cuneiform: half a million tablets and the limits of Sumerian5 key questions · 7 questions · 0 answered

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QuestionWhere it stands

KeyCan machines read the cuneiform tablets that no scholar has read?

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KeyCan the broken tablets of Babylonian literature be reassembled by automated matching of fragments?

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KeyHow many cuneiform tablets survive, and what share has been published or transliterated?

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KeyWhat about the Sumerian language itself is still unknown after 170 years of study?

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Do the proto-cuneiform tablets of Uruk (c. 3300 to 3000 BC) record the Sumerian language?

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Does Sumerian have any demonstrable relative or substratum, or is it an isolate?

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KeyWhy do the Early Dynastic literary texts from Fara and Abu Salabikh resist reading, and can they be read without later duplicates?

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