Cuneiform tablet digitized by scanner, 2009 (photo)

Sarah Koehler, student of theology and oriental studies, analyses the three-dimensional picture of a 3700-year-old clay tablet with cuneiform inscriptions at the Friedrich Schiller University of Jena, Germany, 01 December 2009. The tablet was digitalized with a special scanner and shows mathematical strings and stems from the ancient Mesopotamian city of Nippur, today's Iraq. About 3300 clay tablets and other similar objects from the Hilprecht collection of the 'Institut fuer Sprachen und Kulturen des Vorderen Orient' ('Department of Languages and Cultures of the Orient') shall be recorded with the scanner which was provided by the 'Max-Planck-Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte Berlin' ('Max Planck Institute for the History of Science Berlin'). The 3-D-data will make it possible to produce highly detailed replica of the objects.