? Cival | Main | You have to break a few eggs ?
May 08, 2004
Cuneiform
"It's not exactly Google"... I like the comparison the Boston Globe makes at the top of an article about the Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (CDLI).
These clay documents contain the Epic of Gilgamesh (first written in Sumerian and Akkadian around 1800 B.C. and carefully copied until 500 B.C.) and the Code of Hammurabi, as well as notes and calculations by merchants, doctors, and others from the Babylonian bureaucracy and from the general population, that illuminate what daily life was like thousands of years ago. But these priceless tablets and shards are so fragile that they have been known to crumble spontaneously, so transporting them from place to place for research is unheard of.
Not exactly Google but about exactly the same things we are all still writing down.
Posted by Ghost of a flea at May 8, 2004 08:17 AM
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.ghostofaflea.com/cgi-bin/mt/trackback-engine.cgi/279