AI: Reconstructing an ancient epic was slow work until AI stepped in

In 1872, in a quiet room on the second floor of the British MuseumGeorge Smith, a museum employee, was studying a grime-covered clay tablet when he came across some words that would change his life. ancient In the cuneiform writing, he recognized references to a stranded ship and a bird sent out in search of land. After cleaning the tablet, Blacksmith I was sure I had found a prototype of the biblical flood story.

“I am the first man to read this after more than 2,000 years of oblivion,” Smith is reported to have said in a frenzy of emotion.

Smith realized that the tablet, which had been excavated in what is now Iraq, was a small part of a much larger work, one that some thought might help shed light on the Book of Genesis. The discovery made Smith, who came from a working-class family and had largely taught himself cuneiform, famous. He devoted the rest of his life to searching for the missing fragments of the poem, making multiple trips to the Middle East before dying of illness on his final trip in 1876, at age 36.

During the 152 years since Smith’s discovery, successive generations of Assyriologists (experts in the study of cuneiform writing and the cultures that used it) have continued their quest to reconstruct a complete version of the poem now known as the Epic of GilgameshFragments of the epic, written more than 3,000 years ago and based on earlier works, have resurfaced as tablets have been unearthed in archaeological digs, found in museum storerooms or turned up on the black market.

Researchers face a daunting task. Up to half a million clay tablets, along with many more tablet fragments, are found in the Mesopotamian collections of various museums and universities around the world. But because there are so few experts on cuneiform writing, many of these writings remain unread and many more remain unpublished.

Thus, despite an effort spanning several generations, approximately 30% of Gilgamesh remains missing and there are gaps in modern understanding of both the poem and Mesopotamian writing in general.

Now, an artificial intelligence project called Fragmentarium is helping to fill some of these gaps. Led by Enrique Jiménez, a professor at the Institute of Assyriology at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, the Fragmentarium team uses machine learning to reconstruct digitized tablet fragments at a much faster rate than a human Assyriologist can. So far, AI The study has helped researchers uncover new fragments of Gilgamesh, as well as hundreds of words and lines missing from other works. “This is an extreme acceleration of what was happening since the time of George Smith,” said Andrew George, emeritus professor at the University of London and a leading authority on Gilgamesh, who has produced one of the epic’s English translations.

Before 2018, only about 5,000 tablet fragments had been matched. In the six years since then, Jiménez’s team has successfully matched more than 1,500 more tablet pieces, including those belonging to a newly discovered hymn to the city of Babylon and 20 Gilgamesh fragments that add detail to more than 100 lines of the epic.

The Gilgamesh fragments “offer intriguing insights into the story,” Jimenez said.

At the center of the epic is the story of a friendship between Gilgamesh, who is a demigod and the king of Uruk, and his wild companion, Enkidu. After Gilgamesh and Enkidu kill Humbaba, the monster guardian of the Cedar Forest, the gods kill Enkidu in retaliation. Gilgamesh, in denial, refuses to bury Enkidu until after seven days, when a worm falls from Enkidu’s nose.

“How can I be at peace?” Gilgamesh asks again and again. “When my friend Enkidu, whom I love, has [turned to] clay. [Shall I not be like] he, and also lie down, [never] “be resurrected again, throughout all eternity?”

To escape the specter of death, Gilgamesh sets out on a quest to find his ancestor Utnapishtim, a Noah-like figure who survived the flood and learned the secret of immortality. After wandering through the desert, Gilgamesh comes to a divine-looking tavern on the sea, at the edge of the world. There, the tavern-keeper and brewer, Sidhuri, offers him some sage advice, telling him to enjoy life’s simple pleasures. “Behold the child who holds your hand,” she tells him, “let a wife enjoy your repeated embraces.”

Gilgamesh ignores her and continues his search, until he finally finds Utnapishtim. But the great hero of the flood is unable to help Gilgamesh achieve immortality. Instead, Utnapishtim shares his life story before and during the flood. The end of the epic suggests that Utnapishtim’s wisdom, and the knowledge he confers, is one of the main rewards of Gilgamesh’s journey.

The new fragments discovered with the help of AI reveal elements that provide important details to many of these episodes. One of them, for example, reveals that after killing the forest monster, Gilgamesh and Enkidu traveled to Nippur, the religious center of Mesopotamia and home of the god Enlil. “They went there hand in hand, in an attempt to appease Enlil, who was angry about the death of Humbaba, his protégé,” says Jiménez.

Benjamin R. Foster, a professor of Assyriology and translator of Gilgamesh at Yale University who worked with the AI ​​team on some of the English translations, said the new lines also included details about Enkidu’s efforts to convince Gilgamesh not to kill Humbaba. Other lines include a fragment of a prayer made by Gilgamesh’s mother asking the sun god to touch Enkidu so he could guide Gilgamesh through the cedar forest.

One of the additions that Foster finds most interesting is a single word spoken by Utnapishtim. He tells Gilgamesh that after his workers built the ark, he plied them with alcohol during a feast.

“There was no such word as ‘luxurious’ before,” Foster said. “And I think he feels guilty because he knows that all the people who are helping him build the ark are going to drown in a few days.”

Some of these new findings have been included in English translations of Gilgamesh by Sophus Helle (Yale University Press, 2021) and George (Penguin Classics, 2020). The most recent findings have not yet been published, but Jiménez’s team will soon make all the new pieces available to the public as part of the Gilgamesh translation published in the LMU Electronic Babylonian Library.

Helle is intrigued by how the epic continues to reveal itself. “It’s so old and yet so alive, and it kept changing as I was literally working on it,” she said. But that made the translation more difficult, she said: “I compare it to painting a model who won’t stay still.”

Assyriologists agree that more works of Gilgamesh and other Mesopotamian literature remain to be discovered in unexcavated warehouses and historical sites. Many of the surviving tablets held in museums and universities are seemingly mundane bills of sale, private letters, school exercises and other minutiae from the ancient world. But experts say even these everyday writings can offer literary insight.

Agnete Lassen, associate curator of the Yale Babylonian Collection, said one of her favorite tablets was a letter written by an unknown woman to her brother between 1900 and 1600 B.C.E. that may be quoting a lost work of literature. It reads: “You truly are the sun, so let me warm myself in your warmth. You truly are a cedar, so do not let the heat burn me in your shadow!”

Jimenez is also optimistic that artificial intelligence will allow researchers to make more connections between these types of ancient writings. His team has finished its work with the British Museum and is now working with colleagues at the Iraq Museum in Baghdad, where they hope to find more Gilgamesh pieces.

Meanwhile, the newly discovered lines have already given Smith’s successors plenty to think about.

According to Foster, among the most tantalizing is another line from Utnapishtim: “You who are composed of divine and human flesh, whom they created, even as your father and mother. Did they, Gilgamesh, ever build a palace for a fool?”

“We have no idea what he’s talking about,” Foster said, but he believes a new fragment, whether discovered by artificial intelligence or traditional methods, will soon help solve the mystery.

“Who knows, maybe he’ll show up tomorrow,” he said.