Rewriting the End of Cuneiform Culture (RECC)

BM 46128+46073, the latest dated non-astrological tablet: February/March 22 BCE (Photograph by Ivor Kerslake/LMU with permission of the Trustees of the British Museum)

Bild: BM 46128+46073, the latest dated non-astrological tablet: February/March 22 BCE (Photograph by Ivor Kerslake/LMU with permission of the Trustees of the British Museum)

In the prevailing view, cuneiform script survived until the first century CE because it was the only way to write the most enduring Mesopotamian science, astronomy. This view, however, is skewed by the nature of the data: while astronomical texts are easy to date, the vast majority of non-astronomical tablets cannot be dated and are overlooked in histories of the period. Yet, the vitality of cuneiform in its terminal phase suggests that a wealth of late literary and scholarly tablets awaits the development of new dating methods. ERC-funded Rewriting the End of Cuneiform Culture (RECC) will investigate the production of late cuneiform texts and the networks of scribal families who sustained the tradition. It will use CuneiDate, a new machine learning tool that will enable the dating of undated tablets, potentially transforming how we understand the final centuries of cuneiform writing.

The aim of the RECC project is to explain why cuneiform survived long after the great Mesopotamian centers had lost their prominence and become provinces within vast empires. The hypothesis posits that the survival and flourishing of cuneiform is a reaction to these changes, an attempt to defend the native tradition against cosmopolitan cultures. With their labored writings, Babylonian scholars endeavored to show that their legacy still had the power to speak to their own world.