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Great, thanks. I've run across ORACC before, but I didn't know widespread digitization was part of their aim (i.e., I had the impression it was a database of ar
by mmooss 2y ago
Great, thanks. I've run across ORACC before, but I didn't know widespread digitization was part of their aim (i.e., I had the impression it was a database of artifacts digitized elsewhere).
> There are probably around 1-2 million cuneiform tablets that have been found so far. Many of them complete, but even more of them as fragments.
That's a pretty amazing number - that so many have survived. It seems like it would take too much luck, unless some library has endured this long.
- thaumasiotes 2y agoThose tablets are indestructible once you expose them to fire. The records come from sacked cities. There's no shortage.
- wongarsu 2y agoIf you wanted to design a writing medium that enables archeology, it would be difficult to do better than clay tablets. Fired clay is great for records meant to last, being very fire and water resistant, while unfired clay was reusable if you just made it a bit wet again, great as reusable writing surfaces. So many paper, parchment and papyrus records that were meant to be kept have been lost to fire and water over the millennia. Yet with clay tablets a fire not only struggles to harm the records that were meant to last, it turns all the temporary records, scratch pads and notes left around into long-lasting fired clay. Burn a Sumerian city to the ground and you create a snapshot of all their writing for archeologists to find millennia later