Quality Evaluation of Facsimiles of Hebrew First Temple Period Inscriptions (original) (raw)
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Computer Vision and Machine Learning Methods for Analyzing First Temple Period Inscriptions
Tel Aviv University, 2017
The thesis concentrates on computational methods pertaining to ancient ostraca - ink on clay inscriptions, written in Hebrew. These texts originate from the biblical kingdoms of Israel and Judah, and dated to the late First Temple period (8th – early 6th centuries BCE). The ostraca are almost the sole remaining epigraphic evidence from the First Temple period and are therefore important for archaeological, historical, linguistic, and religious studies of this era. This “noisy” material offers a fertile ground for the development of various “robust” image analysis, image processing, computer vision and machine learning methods, dealing with the challenging domain of ancient documents’ analysis. The common procedures of modern epigraphers involve manual and labor-intensive steps, facing the risk of unintentionally mixing documentation with interpretation. Therefore, the main goal of this study is establishing a computerized paleographic framework for handling First Temple period epigraphic material. The major research questions, addressed in this thesis are: quality evaluation of manual facsimiles; quality evaluation of ostraca images; automatic binarization of the documents and its subsequent refinement; quality evaluation of binarizations on global and local levels; identification of different writers between inscriptions (two distinct methods are proposed); image segmentation (with improvements over the classical Chan-Vese algorithm); and letters’ shape prior estimation. The developed methods were tested on real-world archaeological and modern data and their results are found to be favorable.
Computational Handwriting Analysis of Ancient Hebrew Inscriptions-A Survey
IEEE BITS the Information Theory Magazine, 2022
Ancient texts are unique evidence providing a glimpse into the thoughts, day-today life, and culture of people of long-gone eras. Paleography, the study of writing, aims at documenting the inscriptions, transliterating the texts, reconstructing their historical context, and studying the evolution of writing itself. The digital revolution gave rise to computational paleography, introducing new tools of data acquisition, image processing, and machine learning. Herein, we will provide an introduction to the emerging field of computational paleography through the lens of ancient Hebrew inscriptions, dating from the Iron Age through the Middle Ages. The years that passed since their composition had a great effect on their preservation level, including blurs, stains, and erosions; moreover, some documents tend to fade in the years after their discovery. Therefore, it is of paramount importance to promptly document ancient inscriptions using the most suitable imaging techniques, such as visible, infra-red, or multispectral imaging. Image analysis and processing techniques, such as binarizations, letter segmentation, and letters' prior estimation are valuable in their own right or may serve as a stage for subsequent tasks. We will also discuss automatic handwriting analysis and writers' identification, which could shed light on the historical background of the inscriptions.
Facsimile Creation: Review of Algorithmic Approaches
Alphabets, Texts and Artefacts in the Ancient Near East: Studies Presented to Benjamin Sass, 2016
Our research team enjoyed the privilege of collaborating with Benjamin Sass over a period of several years. We are happy to dedicate this article to him and wish to express our gratitude for what has been both a prodigious and enjoyable experience. The purpose of our joint endeavor has been the introduction of modern techniques from computer science and physics to the realm of Iron Age epigraphy. One of the most important issues addressed during our cooperation was the topic of facsimile creation. Facsimile creation is a necessary preliminary step in the process of deciphering and analyzing ancient inscriptions. Several manual facsimile construction techniques are currently in use: drawing upon collation of the artifact; outlining on transparent paper overlaid on a photograph of the inscription; and computer-aided depiction via software such as Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, Gimp or Inkscape (see Summary section below for software web links). Despite their importance for the field of epigraphy, little attention has thus far been devoted to the methodology of facsimile creation (though the recent comprehensive treatment by Parker and Rollston 2016). Recent decades have seen rapid development and consolidation of various computerized image processing algorithms. Among the most basic and popular tasks in this field is the creation of a black-and-white version of a given image, denoted as image binarization (see Fig.1a–b). Often, such a binarized image is used as a first step for further image processing missions, such as Optical Character Recognition (OCR), texts digitization and text analysis tasks. An algorithmic creation of binarizations can therefore be seen as another method of facsimile creation. Furthermore, a relatively new sub-domain of image processing, Historical Imaging and Processing (HIP), specializes in handling antique documents of different types, periods and origins. Accordingly, binarization algorithms stemming from HIP are even more suitable for archaeological purposes.
The Materiality of Greek and Roman Curse Tablets: Technological Advances, 2022
Many issues faced by paleographers and philologists in their study of the materiality of the objects at hand might provide obstacles that can literally make or break our ability to interact with a given text. The essays in this book show how new technologies are significantly helping in the tasks of deciphering, understanding, and restoring ancient texts written on different materials. Philological editions of ancient texts, and articles in which ancient artifacts are studied, sometimes require facsimiles of the discussed finds: tablets, gemstones, and papyri. The facsimiles are especially important for certain objects when a normal photograph cannot fully capture or elucidate the writing (e.g., texts written on metal lamellae). In these and other cases, as we explore below, the production of facsimiles provides a great tool in the advancement of interacting with and understanding texts. In this chapter we examine some possible methods of producing facsimiles of ancient objects, specifically those that have been studied within the projects led by Christopher A. Faraone and Sofía Torallas Tovar at the University of Chicago. These projects focus on Greco-Egyptian magical formularies and curse tablets written in Greek and Latin. Here we make an initial assessment of the material particularities of individual fragments and then describe different methods that can be used to produce black-and-white facsimiles of these artifacts. Finally, we explore the possibility of using automatic binarization algorithms and analyze the results obtained across different materials.
The relationship between the expansion of literacy in Judah and composition of biblical texts has attracted scholarly attention for over a century. Information on this issue can be deduced from Hebrew inscriptions from the final phase of the first Temple period. We report our investigation of 16 inscriptions from the Judahite desert fortress of Arad, datedca 600 BCE-the eve of Nebuchadnezzar's destruction of Jerusalem. The inquiry is based on new methods for image processing and document analysis, as well as machine learning algorithms. These techniques enable identification of the minimal number of authors in a given group of inscriptions. Our algorithmic analysis, complemented by the textual information, reveals a minimum of six authors within the examined inscriptions. The results indicate that in this remote fort literacy had spread throughout the military hierarchy, down to the quartermaster and probably even below that rank. This implies that an educational infrastructure that could support the composition of literary texts in Judah already existed before the destruction of the first Temple. A similar level of literacy in this area is attested again only 400 y later,ca 200 BCE.
IJERT-An Efficient Conversion of EPIGRAPHICAL Textual Image to User Readable Text
International Journal of Engineering Research and Technology (IJERT), 2013
https://www.ijert.org/an-efficient-conversion-of-epigraphical-textual-image-to-user-readable-text https://www.ijert.org/research/an-efficient-conversion-of-epigraphical-textual-image-to-user-readable-text-IJERTV2IS90473.pdf Epigraphy is the study of inscriptions on rocks, pillars, temple walls, copper plates and other writing material. It is one of the most fascinating and instructive studies. It deals with the art of writing, which distinguishes man from animals and provides us with an instrument for conservation and transmission of historical traditions from generation to generation. Inscriptions are the main source for reconstructing the history and culture of ancient civilizations. It serves as primary documentary evidence to establish legal, socio-cultural, literary, archaeological, and historical antiquity on the basis of engravings. The basic issues caused to the epigraphist are Paleography (letter shapes, direction, and punctuation), Non-standard language (Dialektinschriften etc), Ancient abbreviations, Chronology (ancient dating systems: eponyms, eras etc). Inscriptions are very tough to read by the common people though there is scientific support to such as Petrology and Digital enhancement. To overcome these techniques using natural language processing based on the particular knowledge generator the conversion of ancient ephigraphical text is converted and its efficiency is evaluate according to the performance.