The Original SMS: Tracing its Origins in 3D

Join CEG professor Dominique Ngan-Tillard for this free lunch lecture and 3D scanning of cuneiform tablets demo (*talk begins at 12:45h and all lunches are vegetarian but please note dietary preferences upon registration, and the Library will do its best to accommodate them.) as part of the Language x Power programme.

Cuneiform tablets are remarkable for their longue durée, their wide geographical distribution, and the diversity of their content. Spanning nearly three millennia, they document societal changes across the entire ancient Middle East through an extraordinary range of texts- receipts, legal contracts, poems, personal letters, and more.

Their enduring success is closely tied to their material—clay. This abundant and easily workable material could be quickly inscribed with a stylus and, once dried, became incredibly resistant. As a result, over a million tablets have survived to the present day.

But clay preserves more than just words. It also retains traces of the tablets’ provenance, environmental conditions, and even the people who once handled them.

Dominique Ngan-Tillard will present how, in collaboration with colleagues from TU Delft, Leiden University, DESY in Hamburg, and the CNRS in Nanterre, she applied a range of methods—from basic to advanced—to investigate two tablets: one from southern Mesopotamia, the other from central Anatolia. Their research uncovered insights that extend far beyond the written text.

About the speaker:

Dominique Ngan-Tillard is Associate Professor of Engineering Geology in the section of Geo-Engineering. She specializes in modeling the subsurface in terms of structure and material properties, often using non-destructive testing techniques, and in predicting the response of the subsurface to various loadings. One key aspect of her research is the conceptual modeling of soil microstructures supported by the fusion of multi-scale, multi-physics data. While the tools she has been developing may, in principle, be tested on whatever body of material, she does appreciate the unique valorization of heritage projects.

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