[The following is a very slightly altered (addition of hyperlinks) version of the text of an article appearing in Oriental Institute 2008-2009 Annual Report. Page images of the article as it appeared in its original context are available here]
When we began to learn about the legal emergency
that puts the Persepolis Fortification Archive in peril, a colleague couldn't
resist quoting Samuel Johnson's old saw: "The prospect of hanging concentrates
the mind wonderfully." The prospects of the Archive are still perilous, and the
Persepolis Fortification Archive (PFA) Project's attention is still concentrated
wonderfully on its emergency priorities: to make thorough records of the Archive
and to distribute the records widely, freely, and continuously.
The PFA Project's collaboration with the
West Semitic Research Project (WSRP) at the University of Southern
California captures two sets of very high-resolution images of Persepolis
Fortification tablets and fragments. One set is made with high-resolution
BetterLight scanning backs and with polarized and filtered lighting (fig. 1);
another set is made with polynomial texture mapping (PTM) technology and
software that allows a viewer to manipulate the angle, intensity, and focus of
the apparent lighting. A two-year grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
supporting this work came to an end, but a second two-year Mellon grant keeps
the work going, expands it, and accelerates it by adding another, larger PTM
dome (fig. 2). Clinton Moyer (Ph.D. 2009, Cornell), Joseph Lam (Ph.D. candidate,
NELC), Miller Prosser (Ph.D. candidate, NELC), and John Burnight (Ph.D.
candidate, NELC) are now making these images.
![]() Figure 1. BetterLight scans of an Aramaic Persepolis Fortification tablet. Left, with natural light; right, with infrared filter |
![]() Figure 2. Miller Prosser (foreground) and Clinton Moyer process high-quality images of Persepolis Fortification tablets. Foreground: the new, larger PTM dome; middle: the veteran PTM dome; in alcove at rear: BetterLight scanning camera |
By mid-2009, this phase of the project has made images of about 660 monolingual
Aramaic Fortification tablets, about 900 uninscribed, sealed Fortification
tablets, and about 200 Elamite Fortification tablets. Now that almost all the
Aramaic tablets are captured, the next targets are Aramaic epigraphs on Elamite
cuneiform tablets (figs. 3 and 6), more uninscribed, sealed tablets, and
selected Elamite cuneiform tablets.
During 2008-2009, the crew capturing and editing conventional digital images of
Elamite Fortification tablets included undergraduates Trevor Crowell, Fay Kelly,
and Madison Krieger (all Classics), graduate students Lori Calabria, Paul
Gauthier, Megaera Lorenz, Elise MacArthur, Tytus Mikolajczak (all NELC), and
Glenn Garabrant and Gregory Hebda, often working five at a time (fig. 4). This
phase of the project has also accelerated since Calabria partially automated the
editorial process. As of mid-2009, digital photography of the more than 2,500
PF-NN tablets (that is, Elamite documents that the late Richard T. Hallock
edited in preliminary form, but did not publish) is nearly complete, photographs
of about 425 new Elamite Fortification tablets (Elamite documents that I have
edited in preliminary form) is underway, and photography of the approximately
2,000 Elamite tablets that Hallock published in Persepolis Fortification Tablets
(OIP
92 [1969]) will soon resume.
![]() Figure 3. BetterLight scans of an Aramaic epigraph on an Elamite Persepolis Fortification tablet. Left, with polarized light; right, with red filter |
We are providing the photographs of the Elamite tablets to our collaborators at
the Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (CDLI) at the University of California,
Los Angeles, to supplement the fast flat-bed scans made for CDLI's online
presentation, and the revised transliterations of the texts being completed by
graduate students Andrew Dix, Seunghee Yie (both NELC), and Wayne Munsch
(Divinity). (See
http://cdli.ucla.edu/ ; click on "CDLI Search" and enter "OIP 092" in the
form under "Primary Publication.") Edited images of all categories of Persepolis
Fortification documents are being copied to a server at the Collège de France
for release on
Achemenet and its companion site, the
Musée Achéménide.
Images, editions, and cataloging information all flow into the
On-Line Cultural Heritage Research Evironment (OCHRE), where PFA Project
manager Dennis Campbell (Ph.D.,
NELC) coordinates, connects, and smoothes the data compiled by PFA Project
editors, and prepares it for public release. Campbell and Internet Data
Specialist Sandra Schloen have added many refinements to the PFA interface on
OCHRE. Graduate students Seunghee Yie and Wayne Munsch are tagging and linking
photographs to transliterations and the transliterations to the glossary and
parser. As of mid-2009, OCHRE users can view about 750 Persepolis Fortification
documents: about 500 Elamite Persepolis Fortification tablets, with interlinked
transliterations, translations, notes, seal information, Elamite-English
glossary, topical English-Elamite glossary, morphological parsing, and
conventional digital images; about 30 Aramaic tablets, with interlinked
transliterations, translations and notes, seal information, glossary, scans of
the late Raymond Bowman's draft copies and editions, and selected
high-resolution BetterLight scans, and live screen-resolution PTM images; a
sample of 110 uninscribed, sealed Fortification tablets with interlinked seal
catalog information, seal drawings, and live screenresolution PTM images (fig.
5).
InscriptiFact, the online application of the WSRP, makes the PFA Project's
high-resolution images public with a very robust and user-friendly interface
that allows viewers to manipulate, compare, and download them. As of mid-2009,
InscriptiFact users can view almost 9,000 images of about 370 Persepolis
Fortification documents (mostly Aramaic and uninscribed tablets and fragments).
WSRP has developed an elegant stand-alone viewer for PTM images that can be run
as a Java application on PC or Macintosh computers, currently available to PFA
Project staff and soon to be generally available (fig. 6). WSRP is testing an
online version of this viewer to be incorporated into the InscriptiFact
application. The capabilities, speed, design, ease of use, and platform
independence of these viewers are a great advance over the previously available
DOS-based viewer, allowing users to see and manipulate PTM imagery at a choice
of resolutions, and to make side-by-side comparisons with high-resolution flat
scans.
![]() Figure 4. Working at two photography stations, two photo editing stations, and one station cataloging scans, all in a single Oriental Institute office, from left, Tytus Mikolajczak, Lise Truex, Glen Garabrant, Trevor Crowell, Lori Calabria. Background, right: storage boxes of still unprocessed Persepolis Fortification tablets |
![]() Figure 5. OCHRE views of Persepolis Fortification tablets. Top: Elamite document, showing transliteration, translation, seal information, glossary look-up, and another tablet opened from a reference in the glossary look-up, also with transliteration, translation, and tagged photograph, and highlighting the signs of the word found in the glossary. Bottom: Aramaic document with two texts, one incised and the other in ink, showing transliteration, translation, seal information, autographed copy by Raymond A. Bowman, BetterLight image (with orange-filtered lighting) and live PTM image |
During three extended visits to the Oriental
Institute in the past year, PFA Project editor Wouter Henkelman (Amsterdam and
Paris) has prepared collated, revised, and annotated editions and translations
of about 1,000 Elamite PF-NN documents. These are being brought online category
by category in OCHRE, fully glossed and parsed, along with linked and tagged
images. Revised editions of comparable previously published Elamite
Fortification documents and preliminary editions of comparable newly recorded
Elamite Fortification texts will accompany these releases.
During nine trips to the Oriental Institute in the past year, PFA Project editor
Mark Garrison (Trinity University, San Antonio) has verified and revised
identifications of seal impressions on about 850 of these PF-NN documents. He
has set up an OCHRE-based catalog of about 1,150 seals identified from
impressions on published Elamite Fortification tablets, incorporating collated
drawings of those that he and Margaret Root have published in the first volume
of their magisterial work on Persepolis Fortification tablet seals (Images
of Heroic Encounter [OIP 117]) and drawings of those to be published in
succeeding volumes. He has added approximately 225 more distinct seals from
impressions on new Elamite tablets and about 200 more distinct seals from
impressions on uninscribed Fortification tablets, making working drawings of
about 100 of them. Sabrina Maras (Ph.D., Berkeley), supported by a Levy
Foundation postdoctoral fellowship, now works with Garrison on seals on the
uninscribed tablets. Garrison has systematically surveyed almost 30 percent of
the storage boxes of previously unedited Fortification tablets and fragments,
selecting, boxing, and labeling uninscribed tablets for high-quality imaging,
cataloging, and study, building a sample that already amounts to about 1,400
items as of mid-2009.
![]() Figure 6. WSRP's stand-alone PTM viewer, showing obverse and reverse of a previously unedited Elamite Fortification tablet (the text is a summary accounting of grain stored and disbursed at one of the sub-stations around Persepolis during three years), with seal impression and Aramaic epigraph on the reverse |
During four trips to the Oriental Institute in the past year, PFA Project editor
Annalisa Azzoni (Vanderbilt University, Nashville), after reviewing the
approximately 680 monolingual Aramaic Fortification tablets and most of the
about 180 Aramaic epigraphs on Elamite Fortification tablets, is populating
OCHRE databases with cataloging and epigraphic information, and preparing
advanced editions for release on OCHRE. PFA Project editor Elspeth Dusinberre
(University of Colorado, Boulder) has processed more than 4,000 conventional
digital images of the seals on the Aramaic tablets, uploaded them to the
Project's server to be added to OCHRE displays of the tablets, and is populating
a descriptive and analytical catalog of about 500 distinct seals on these
tablets that she and Garrison set up on OCHRE.
I have suspended detailed cataloging of the boxes of unedited Fortification
tablets in favor of selecting the best-preserved or most promising individual
tablets and fragments for conservation and recording. By mid-2009, I have added
preliminary editions of about 425 new Elamite texts to OCHRE. Project
conservators Monica Hudak and Jeanne Mandel have cleaned and stabilized about
650 Fortification tablets, about 325 of them during the last year. The speed and
results of their painstaking work improved markedly after the Compact Phoenix
laser cleaning system (known to PFA Project staff as the "Death Ray") came on
line in November 2008 (see
Oriental Institute News & Notes, Winter 2008) (fig. 7).
Some Project work slowed or stopped in July/August 2008 while third-floor
offices of the Oriental Institute received badly needed upgrades in electrical
wiring and data connections. The hiatus provided an occasion for Wouter
Henkelman, Mark Garrison, and student workers to put all the tablets that have
been published and all those that are in process into new boxes and to file them
in new storage cabinets, and an occasion for me to consolidate storage of the
boxes of unprocessed tablets and fragments and to reorganize and enlarge Project
work space in my
office (fig. 4).
![]() Figure 7. Conservator Monica Hudak cleans a Persepolis Fortification tablet with the Compact Phoenix laser, a.k.a. the "Death Ray" |
During the reorganization of tablet storage, we moved most of Richard Hallock's
manuscripts, notes, and files on Persepolis materials to Humanities Division
Research Computing to be scanned and made available to off-site project staff.
Volunteer Greg Hebda and graduate student Lise Truex (NELC), working with Lec
Maj at Humanities Computing, began to scan and catalog photographic negatives
and prints of Persepolis Fortification tablets made in 1940 -41 under a grant
from Works Progress Administration (WPA). We expect to display these pictures
eventually online, alongside modern digital images of the same tablets and
fragments.
When floods of data produced by the various parts of the PFA Project overwhelmed
the hospitable resources of Humanities Division Computing, the Oriental
Institute acquired a dedicated server for the Project, still maintained and
managed by Lec Maj and his colleagues at Humanities Computing. In addition to
holding raw data in process, finished files, working databases, scanned
documents, and online tools - sixteen terabytes of material in live storage so
far - the server shares data with collaborating projects elsewhere. Information
capture still outstrips information processing, and many Project participants
rely on direct access to fresh raw data, so even the current 22.5 terabyte
capacity of this server will be a tight fit for some time ahead.
Despite stressful economic times, supporters of the PFA Project have continued
to step up to meet the emergency. The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation awarded a
second two-year grant, larger than the first, to support expanded
high-resolution imaging work. An award from the Iran Heritage Foundation of
London made it possible to set up a computer for in-house post-processing of the
PTM image sets. The generous response to a fund-raiser in Los Angeles, organized
by the Farhang Foundation (Iranian-American Heritage Foundation of Southern
California), made possible an award that supports conservation of Persepolis
tablets.
We try to convey to wider audiences the unique importance of the PFA and to
describe the accomplishments and aspirations of the PFA Project. I discussed the
Archive and the Project in lectures at the University of Vienna, Harvard, Tufts,
Yale, and New York University, in presentations to the Visiting Committee of the
Oriental Institute and to the docents and volunteers of the Oriental Institute
Museum, and in remarks at fund-raisers for the National Iranian-American Council
in Washington and New York. Oriental Institute Director Gil Stein and I
described the Archive, the Project, and the emergency in which we operate at a
panel discussion in Chicago organized by the Iranian-American Bar Association.
Mark Garrison lectured on the Fortification seal impressions at the University
of Michigan; Elspeth Dusinberre spoke on the seals on Aramaic tablets at the
Archaeology Day of the Boulder and Denver societies of the Archaeological
Institute of America.
The situation of the PFA also attracts continuing journalistic attention. An
article by Gwenda Blair in the December 2008 issue of Chicago Magazine describes
the progress and current status of the lawsuit (Paying
with the Past). N. Beintema interviewed Wouter Henkelman on the
circumstances of the Archive and the Project for the science and research
section of the leading Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad. The article by Marlene
Belilos in the French online journal Rue89 connected the circumstances of the
PFA with the legal travails of recent museum exhibitions (Indemniser
les victimes d'attentats en vendant de l'art?). Sharon Cohen's
article for the Associated Press was widely published (for example, in the
Chicago Tribune, the Philadelphia Enquirer, the San Francisco Examiner, and Le
Nouvel Observateur; see
FOCUS: Terrorism impacting archaeology),
as was a release prepared by the University News Office (Ancient
Persian Archive Digitized with Support of Mellon Foundation;
the accompanying video presentation has not gone viral on YouTube; see
The Persepolis Fortification Tablets).
Most significant for the larger intellectual and cultural missions of the
Oriental Institute is the note by Sebastian Heath and Glenn Schwartz in American
Journal of Archaeology 113 (2009), discussing the PFA in the broader context of
recent legal troubles affecting museum exhibitions and cultural exchanges (Legal
Threats to Cultural Exchange of Archaeological Materials).
Most of this information, along with many other articles about the PFA and about
Achaemenid archaeology and epigraphy, can be followed through the
PFA Project's Weblog (where readers can now sign up to receive e-mail
notification of new postings). PFA Project editor Charles E. Jones (Institute
for the Study of the Ancient World, New York) reports a substantial increase
over last year's
traffic: the blog has been viewed almost 20,000 times in the twelve months
beginning July 1, 2008, by almost 12,500 distinct visitors, about 12,000 of whom
made repeat visits. All told, the blog has been viewed more than 50,000 times
since it debuted in October 2006.
This year saw the publication of the symposium on the PFA held in Paris near the
beginning of the PFA Project, in 2006, where PFA Project editors discussed the
early stages of research that is now bearing fruit, and other scholars discussed
the broader context of the PFA (L'archive
des fortifications de Persépolis: État des questions et perspectives de
recherches, edited by P. Briant, W. Henkelman, and M. Stolper, Persika 12
(Paris: De Boccard, 2009); despite the title, most of the volume is in English).
The year also saw the publication of Henkelman's work on Achaemenid religion in
light of the Persepolis Fortification texts, a landmark in the use of the PFA to
expound complex historical phenomena, including the most up-to-date, most
thorough, and most accurate description of the Archive to be found anywhere (Other
Gods Who Are: Studies in Elamite-Iranian Acculturation Based on the Persepolis
Fortification Texts, Achaemenid History 14 (Leiden: Nederlands
Instituut voor het Nabije Oosten, 2008); see especially "Chapter 2: The
Fortification Archive," pp. 65-179). Forthcoming presentations of
Project-related scholarly results include an article by Henkelman and Stolper on
ethnic identity and labeling at Persepolis, a paper by Azzoni and Stolper first
given at the annual meeting of the American Oriental Society on a recurrent
Aramaic epigraph on the Elamite tablets, and an article by Garrison and Robert
Ritner on the Egyptian-inscribed seal impressions on Fortification documents.
The greatest value of the PFA lies in its combination of integrity and
complexity - integrity in that these tens of thousands of pieces were found
together and fit together in meaningful ways; complexity in that the pieces take
many forms bearing many kinds of information. The greatest value of the record
that the PFA Project is struggling to make and distribute lies in the
interconnections among the pieces, forming a structure of data and inference
that grows steadily in scope, depth, and reliability. By now, most of the new
data is of a familiar kind, so most of the thrills of fresh discovery are things
that only real PFA nerds can appreciate - new bits of vocabulary, grammar,
paleography, iconography, or new documents that fill in old gaps. Even so, as we
sift the tablets and fragments, real surprises still appear from time to time.
Most gratifying for me during the last year was an Elamite Fortification tablet
with a text of a completely new type, though it refers clearly to known
administrative procedures. Without the integrated context of the whole archive,
it would have been all but incomprehensible. It records an internal
investigation of some administrative activity in the years immediately before
the oldest preserved texts of the Archive. It reminds us that although the
structure of interconnected information that we are building looks static, like
the mounted skeleton of an extinct creature, the ancient reality that it
represents was dynamic. When it was a living archive, it changed constantly as
information moved through the system, and the people who compiled and filed
these records also consulted them, used them to investigate and assess their own
circumstances.