Digital HammurabiNational Geographic Magazine • March 2004

DigitalDoppelgängers

ARTIFACTS

Scholars mourned when archaeologi-cal artifacts in Iraq

were looted or destroyed in the aftermath of the recent war. But in the future there may be a way to create a lasting record of irreplace-able artifacts. The Digital Hammurabi Project, begun at

Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, is working with companies like Arius3D in Toronto to develop high-reso-lution scanners that create detailed images such as this one of a seventh-century B.C. cuneiform tablet found in Mesopotamia. Some 300,000 tablets eventu-ally could be

scanned and their images made available through the Internet. Sitting at their own computers, researchers

worldwide would be able to manipulate images, rotating the cyber tablets and zooming in to read miniscule writing. The scans could also be used to make full-size copies of the digitized arti-facts. —Ann Perry

BRITISH MUSEUM: IMAGE PROVIDED BYKESTREL 3D. WITH ARIUS3D TECHNOLOGY

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