Scientists are tantalizingly close to cracking any ancient texts wide open

[jim bell]

https://www.inverse.com/science/ai-code-break
"It is one of the seminal texts of world literature — and an exceedingly rare example of an ancient written story that made it to modern times. The reason why is not to do with production: Many ancient peoples were just as interested in documenting their histories as modern humans (although perhaps not to the extent of the Twitterati). Yet cracking the few, often fragmented pieces of writing we have left from the ancient world is difficult — especially in places devastated by colonialism."
"In Odysseus’s time, many people wrote on papyrus, but some would also directly inscribe messages onto metal, stone, and pottery. These engraved texts are technically called inscriptions. As with much of ancient literature, we only have fragments of some inscriptions — many are lost to wear and tear."

"But Odysseus’ Ithaca now lends its name a neural network — essentially a kind of algorithm — that has one purpose: To restore ancient, fragmented inscriptions, and then read them. In a new paper published last week in the journal Nature, the scientists behind the AI reveal how it works to crack archaic codes."
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