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Selections from the Cuneiform Tablets Collection: Building the Digital Collection


Photographing the Cuneiform Tablets
The cuneiform tablets in this collection were photographed with a PowerPhase 4x5 scanning back camera at the Library of Congress Digital Scan Center. All sides of the tablets were photographed. The master (archival) versions of the images are 300-dots-per-inch (dpi) color images in the TIFF format. The browser-display images on the Web site were generated from the master TIFF files in the JPEG and GIF format, using an Image Alchemy script.

Scanning the Cuneiform Drawing Sheets
The cuneiform drawing sheets show each character from its original cuneiform materials. Every drawing sheet is annotated according to the original’s surface. The drawing sheets are intended to make characters easy to read or identify. The master (archival) versions of the images are 300-dpi grayscale images (8-bit, 256 shades of gray) in the TIFF format. The browser-display images on the Web site were generated from the master TIFF files in the JPEG and GIF format, using an Image Alchemy script.

Scanning the Cuneiform Transliteration Sheets
The transliteration sheets were transcribed from the original tablets and the drawing sheets. Due to problems with the original cuneiform tablets, transliterations for numbers 20, 22, 36, and 38 are not available. The master (archival) versions of the images are 300-dpi bitonal images (1-bit, black and white) in the TIFF format. The browser-display images on the Web site were generated from the master TIFF files in the JPEG and GIF formats, using an Image Alchemy script.


Global Gateway |Cuneiform Tablets Collection Home >> Building the Digital Collection