This paper presents the DEA’s introspective and reembodied ways of preserving and studying the past by reconsidering historical artifacts and their digital re-materialization. The following sections discuss the project’s approach to copies and digital copies, 3D digitization and enhanced visualization processes, comprehensive cloud services, and 3D printing to present the DEA steps toward facilitating and advancing archaeology and epigraphy. Through such approaches that combine traditional rigor with technological novelty and affordances, the team’s vision is to popularize archaeology and epigraphy within and beyond academia and pinpoint the significance of the world’s heritage to the new generations of students and the public.

The database includes record entries where all necessary information about an object in the collection can be stored, including metadata, text, and translation. Each entry includes mapping a timeline features for the object along with additional media storage that can be linked to the object.

The ultimate objective was to initiate the process of digital preservation of the squeezes and other artifacts. To achieve this, I solicited the support of Angelos Barmpoutis of the Digital Worlds Institute and Eleni Bozia of the Classics Department at the University of Florida, whose Open Source Digital Epigraphy software proved to be an ideal application for our needs. By using scans from a flatbed scanner or raking light photographs one can easily render 3D scans of the squeezes. An example of AIBL-CIS Dos. 12.01.01 “Inscription royale d’Idalion” (446 BCE = RÉS 453; squeeze made in 1887) can be found here.

Manipulating the photograph using the Digital Epigraphy’s user interface produces the best known available photograph of the inscription.

Chapter 5 of the book is titled “New Approaches” and features the Digital Rosetta Stone project (pages 236-241). The book includes a photograph of our digitization session in June 2018 that led to the 3D digitization of the Rosetta Stone and the capturing of the depth map of the inscription.

In this work we present a method for a novel interface for studying inscriptions, using augmented reality head-mounted displays, such as Microsoft’s Hololens glasses. This interface allows the users to browse through 3D databases of inscriptions and visualize the inscription within their actual physical space, such as office or classroom. Once the user positions the hologram of the inscription in a particular location, as the top of the desk, it remains there, allowing him/her to move around the inscription and study the artifact as a whole, up close, and from different perspectives. Similarly multiple inscriptions can be positioned next to one another, providing the opportunity for comparative readings, profound study of lettering techniques, and potential identification and pairing of fragments.

To the best of our knowledge this is the first project that utilizes this kind of holographic technology, opening for the first time the possibilities to epigraphists to conveniently study the inscriptions in a more natural way as physical objects instead of viewing the artifacts simply as 3D files on a desktop computer.

En tant qu’empreinte de l’inscription, un estampage papier est naturellement un objet en trois dimensions. Dans la transposition dans un environnement numérique, il nous a semblé impératif de tenir le plus grand compte de cette caractéristique essentielle afin de préserver la « gestuelle de l’épigraphiste », qui manipule l’estampage papier en faisant varier un éclairage frisant sur les reliefs moulés des lettres pour en faciliter le déchiffrement par un ombrage différentiel. Il nous est en effet apparu que les tentatives antérieures de valorisation par le numérique de collections d’estampages par la diffusion de seules photographies 2D n’ont pas toujours été convaincantes, précisément parce que cette qualité de l’estampage, objet papier en relief, avait été négligée ou n’avait pas pu être transposée, la technique de création d’images virtuelles en 3D n’existant pas encore. C’est pourquoi nous avons adopté le protocole développé par nos collègues du Digital Epigraphy and Archeology project de l’Université de Floride, qui propose une méthode de traitement simple et efficace, aboutissant à une visualisation des estampages tenant compte de ces caractéristiques grâce à un outil de reconstruction du relief (Barmpoutis et al. 2010). Ce procédé se fonde sur la double numérisation de l’estampage à haute résolution en variant l’angle d’exposition à la lumière de 90°, puis sur une modélisation de la silhouette de l’inscription à partir de la confrontation des ombres portées sur les deux images. L’estampage peut ainsi être manipulé à l’écran, ce qui permet l’observation sous différents angles de vues des lettres gravées avec une variation de l’ombrage ; les gestes et les usages de l’épigraphiste sont transposés, la 3D lui offrant des conditions de lecture équivalentes, voire meilleures, à celles dont il bénéficie habituellement.

The proposed framework employs a shape-from-shading technique to reconstruct in 3D the shape of the inscribed surfaces. The obtained surfaces are segmented into smaller box-shaped regions containing single letters. These letters are classified into groups of same characters or symbols and then an atlas (average) letter shape is created for each character. For the construction of those atlases we employ a functional minimization method that registers the surfaces of same letters to the unknown average surface, which is also estimated simultaneously. Using the estimated atlases an automated analysis of the inscribed letters is performed. This framework can be effectively used for the study of the variations of the lettering techniques within an inscription or a set of inscriptions. We applied our framework to five ancient Greek inscriptions. Our results are reported in detail and the variations found in lettering techniques are commented on by archaeologists who also validate the accuracy of our proposed method.

We have applied our framework to five inscribed fragments from the archaeological site of Epidauros, containing religious hymns for Asclepius and other deities (IG IV I 2, 129-135; SEG 30, 390 = Robert Wagman, Inni di Epidauro, 1995). Although found in different locations, these inscriptions show close affinities in content (sacred poetry), material (red local limestone) and writing (uncial lettering of the third century CE). The 3D reconstruction of the letterforms provides us with definite proof that all of them came from the same monument, possibly an inscribed wall from one of the buildings in the sanctuary’s main area. A closer observation of the results reveals even some minor groups of letters with similar construction, which validates the accuracy of the proposed method. The advantages of 3D reconstruction in epigraphical research are especially obvious in the case of badly weathered or damaged inscribed surfaces, where the lettering is difficult to discern with the naked eye.