Persepolis Fortification Archive Project Annual Report 2009-2010
12/14/10
By
Matthew
W. Stolper,
Persepolis
Fortification Archive Project
[The following is a very slightly altered (addition
of hyperlinks and color photographs) version of the text of an article appearing
in Oriental Institute 2009-2010 Annual Report. Page images of the article as it
appeared in its original context follow below]
The
Persepolis Fortification Archive is a treasury of information about the
languages, society, institutions, religion, and art of the Achaemenid Persian
Empire at its zenith, around 500 bc. Its value depends on a combination of
complexity (the archive contains detailed information of many different kinds)
and integrity (the archive is an excavated artifact, a single, coherent cache of
tens of thousands of documents from a single time and place).
The legal crisis that puts the future of the many Persepolis Fortification
tablets in doubt also endangers the integrity of the single Persepolis
Fortification Archive. The suit is still before federal courts, and the threat
remains grave and persistent, but while the law takes its stately course, the
Persepolis Fortification Archive Project pursues its emergency priorities: to
enable future research by making thorough records of the archive, and to enable
current research by distributing the records freely and continuously.

Figure
1. Four BetterLight scans of a fragmentary Persepolis Fortification Aramaic
tablet (PFAT 684). Clockwise from upper left:
polarized light, infrared
filter, negative tone scale, red filter
During
2009-2010, Clinton Moyer (PhD 2009, Cornell), Joseph Lam (PhD candidate, NELC),
Miller Prosser (PhD candidate, NELC), and John Walton (PhD candidate, NELC)
continued to operate the two Polynomial Texture Mapping (PTM) domes and the
BetterLight scanning camera, making very high-quality images of selected
Fortification tablets and fragments (fig. 1). As of mid-2010, this phase of the
project - a collaboration with the West Semitic Research Project (WSRP) at the
University of Southern California - has captured images of about 2,600 items:
more than 670 monolingual Aramaic tablets, more than 200 Aramaic epigraphs on
tablets with Elamite cuneiform texts, about 1,500 sealed, uninscribed tablets,
and about 200 Elamite tablets and fragments.
Figure 2. Wear and repair on one of the
PTM domes
The range
of imaging techniques, the range of detail that they reveal, and the rate of
output from this phase of the project grow with experience. Making the images
outruns processing them for display, so two PTM-image processing stations have
been added at the Oriental Institute to supplement post-processing done at the
University of Southern California. Despite the duct-tape and baling-wire look of
the PTM domes (fig. 2), their reliability is outstanding: the shutters of the
cameras on the two PTM domes have tripped more than 1,000,000 times during the
life of the project.
Manning the post-processing stations are some of the crew who are also making
and editing conventional digital images of the largest component of the
Persepolis Fortification Archive, the Elamite Fortification tablets and
fragments. During the past year, this group included Lori Calabria, Jon
Clindaniel, Gregory Hebda, Will Kent, Megaera Lorenz, Tytus Mikolajczak, and
Lise Truex (all NELC), Joshua Skornik (Divinity School); Anastasia Chaplygina
(MAPH); Nicholas Geller, Amy Genova, Erika Jeck, and Daniel Whittington
(Classics); and returning Persepolis Fortification Archive Project alumnus
Trevor Crowell (Catholic University). Three photography and editing stations are
in use now, and so far this phase of the project has made about 50,000 images of
about 4,000 tablets and fragments with Elamite cuneiform texts. Editing these
pictures for display now runs ahead of taking them, so the backlog is shrinking.
Older picture sets are being checked and reshot as necessary for completeness
and to match the higher standards of the later sets that reflect the
photographers' accumulated experience. Haphazard file names from earlier picture
sets are being made consistent with later sets, to facilitate linked online
display and to prepare metadata for long-term storage.
After two more extended visits to the Oriental Institute, Persepolis
Fortification Archive Project editor Wouter Henkelman (Free University of
Amsterdam and College de France) has finished revised, collated, and annotated
editions of about 2,400 of the 2,600 Elamite texts known from preliminary
editions by the late Richard Hallock (called NN texts). He expects to collate
the remainder in the summer and autumn of 2010 and to furnish complete
translations in preparation for online distribution and hard-copy publication. I
have continued to make preliminary editions of new Elamite Fortification texts,
concentrating on document types that are underrepresented in the published
sample of the Persepolis Fortification Archive; as of mid-2010, I have recorded
about 585 of these.
The second largest component of the Persepolis Fortification Archive consists of
uninscribed (anepigraphic) tablets (PFUT or PFAnep), that is, tablets with seal
impressions but without accompanying texts. Our first estimates of the number of
useful pieces of this kind were too low. During nine trips to the Oriental
Institute during the past year, Persepolis Fortification Archive Project editor
Mark Garrison (Trinity University) systematically examined another 25 percent of
the 2,600 boxes of Fortification tablets and fragments to select uninscribed
tablets for cataloging and PTM imaging. Now that about half of the boxes of
tablets have been sifted, more than 2,100 uninscribed tablets have been selected
for study. Post-doctoral researcher Sabrina Maras (University of
California-Berkeley) is cataloging this material under Garrison's direction, a
process that involves identifying impressions of previously known seals,
assigning numbers to new seals, and sketching impressions of them; during the
summer of 2010, she is joined in this work by graduate student Jenn Finn
(University of Michigan). The results continue to bear out the general
observation that some seals used on uninscribed tablets were also used on
Elamite or Aramaic Fortification tablets, but most - around ten times as many -
were not: on 275 cataloged tablets, there are impressions of more than thirty
seals previously known from tablets with Elamite texts, but there are also
impressions of 300 new seals. Garrison also continues to read the seals on the
NN tablets. As of mid-2010, he has identified seal impressions on almost half of
the NN tablets, and about 1,250 tablets that have yielded impressions of another
465 previously unknown seals. Post-doctoral student Wu Xin (Institute for the
Study of the Ancient World, New York) is documenting some of this material under
Garrison's direction.

Figure 3. Impression of a newly identified
inscribed seal in Assyrian style accompanying
a newly edited Elamite text of an underrepresented type
All told,
impressions of about 2,500 distinct seals have been cataloged on Persepolis
Fortification tablets so far, the markers of as many distinct individuals and
offices. Even if new seals are identified at a slower rate as work continues,
the Persepolis Fortification Archive is certain to yield one of the largest
coherent sets of images from anywhere in the ancient world.
The third main component of the Persepolis Fortification Archive consists of
tablets with texts in Aramaic, some 670 identified to date. Persepolis
Fortification Archive Project editor Annalisa Azzoni (Vanderbilt University)
made two extended trips to the Oriental Institute during the past year to work
on them. She has examined, numbered, cataloged, and made preliminary editions of
about 100 monolingual Aramaic tablets and about 110 of the 200 Aramaic epigraphs
on Elamite tablets identified so far. She is developing a formal typology of the
documents to allow consistency with work on the Elamite texts and to clarify
functional connections among streams of data recorded in Aramaic and in Elamite.
Graduate student Emily Wilson (Classics), working under the direction of
Persepolis Fortification Archive Project editors Elspeth Dusinberre (University
of Colorado) and Mark Garrison, has been completing Dusinberre's collated
drawings of seals on the Aramaic tablets and entering new descriptive and
cataloging data on the PFAT seals in the
On-Line Cultural Heritage Research Environment (OCHRE).

Figure 4. What the seals show that the
texts do not: PTM views of altar scenes from seal impressions on four
uninscribed fortification tablets
Figure 5. What the seals tell about the seal users: among 2,500 seals
identified so far in the PFA, only four show scenes of human warfare; here,
a Persian archer shoots a Scythian warrior in the seal
impression on an Elamite Fortification tablet
Persepolis Fortification Archive project manager Dennis Campbell (post-doctoral
student, Oriental Institute) coordinates, connects, and smoothes data and images
for presentation via OCHRE. Oriental Institute Internet data specialist Sandra
Schloen has prepared a revised version of OCHRE's display of
Persepolis Fortification Archive material that includes a range of options for
viewing and combining texts, translations, glossaries, grammatical information,
and seals, displayed with a new look and feel. Lying behind this display are
improved tools for importing texts and glossing and parsing them, hotspotting
images, and linking images to texts - all processes that are increasingly
automated as the corpus of information in OCHRE grows. Graduate student Seunghee
Yie (NELC) imports Elamite texts into OCHRE and prepares editions for export to
other sites (notably the
Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative [CDLI]); graduate student Wayne Munsch
(Divinity School) tags and links photographs, transliterations, and grammatical
parse of Elamite Fortification documents.

Figure 6. Two views of an Aramaic Fortification tablet: left, PTM image
highlighting seal impression;
right, BetterLight scan with red filter, highlighting inked text
More than
20,000 conventional and high-quality digital images, more than 7,000
low-resolution PTM sets, more than 3,200 editions of Elamite texts, and 100
editions of Aramaic texts, drawings, and analytical information on more than 650
new seals and a catalog of about 1,100 previously known seals have been entered
in OCHRE in preparation for public display. As of mid-2010, about 1,400
Fortification tablets are publicly available on OCHRE, including 1,250 Elamite
tablets presented with transliterations, many with translations, and all with
click-through glossary and morphological parsing, conventional photographs (many
of them tagged and linked to transliterations), seal analysis, and other
options; 40 Aramaic tablets, presented with transliterations, translations, seal
information, click-through glossary and parse, and high-quality images,
including screen-resolution PTM images that allow the viewer to control the
lighting on screen; and 110 uninscribed, sealed tablets with cataloging
information, some collated drawings, and high-quality images, including live
screen-resolution PTM imagery.

Figure
7. OCHRE display of an Elamite Fortification tablet, text, translation, and
seal impression
The West Semitic Research Project (WSRP) team at the University of Southern
California presents images of Persepolis Fortification tablets via their online
application
InscriptiFact. Publicly available there as of mid-2010 are about 15,000
images of about 525 Persepolis Fortification tablets, including 400 Aramaic and
100 uninscribed tablets. In the spring of 2010, InscriptiFact released a new
version that incorporates a robust online viewer for high-resolution PTM
imagery. This allows users to manipulate apparent lighting (direction,
intensity, and focus of one light or two) and apparent surface reflectivity and
to compare PTM views with one another and with high-resolution static images.
The viewer and the PTM files can also be downloaded for local use.

Figure 8. Antiquity at Persepolis: three views of the seal impression and
Aramaic epigraph on reverse
of
an Elamite Fortification tablet (PF 2026), displayed in Inscriptifact. Left:
static views with polarized light and infrared filter; right,
high-resolution PTM image. The Old Babylonian seal was more than 1,000 years
old when it made this impression
Efforts to promote awareness of the plight of the Persepolis Fortification
Archive, the unique qualities and value of the Persepolis Fortification Archive,
and the aims, methods, and results of the Persepolis Fortification Archive
Project included a panel at the annual meeting of the Archaeological Institute
of America in January 2010, with presentations by me and by Persepolis
Fortification Archive Project members Annalisa Azzoni, Dennis Campbell, Elspeth
Dusinberre, and Mark Garrison, along with WSRP collaborators Marilyn Lundberg
and Bruce Zuckerman (USC). A panel at the annual meeting of the American
Oriental Society honoring the Achaemenid historian (and member of the Persepolis
Fortification Archive Project's international advisory board) Amélie Kuhrt
included papers by me and by project editors Garrison and Henkelman, and one by
graduate student Persepolis Fortification Archive Project worker Tytus
Mikolajczak. As professeur invité at the College de France in Paris in November
2009, Garrison gave four lectures on the glyptic art of the Persepolis
Fortification Archive, drawing on recent project results. Azzoni lectured on the
Persepolis Fortification Archive and the project at the Warren Center for the
Humanities at Vanderbilt University, and at Baylor University. Dusinberre
presented a talk on the Persepolis Fortification Archive at the Boulder,
Colorado, Society of the Archaeological Institute of America. I talked about the
Persepolis Fortification Archive and the project in and around Chicago at the
Harvard Club, at the University of Chicago Humanities Day, at Wheaton College,
at the Illinois Institute of Technology, at the Franke Institute for the
Humanities, and at the Midwest Faculty Seminar; farther afield I talked at an
event organized by Friends of the Persepolis Fortification Archive Project in
Palo Alto (a
video of the talk is available),
at Berkeley, at the New York University Humanities Institute, at the University
of Pennsylvania, at a symposium of the American Institute of Iranian Studies in
New York, and at the British Museum. At Johns Hopkins University, I had the
honor of devoting the annual W. F. Albright Memorial Lecture to the Persepolis
Fortification Archive Project. At Oxford University, I described our methods and
experience to the staff of an Oxford-Southampton pilot project using PTM imaging
to record ancient artifacts.

Figure 9. Athenian owl in Persepolis and California; title slide of PFA
Project panel at 2010 meeting of the Archaeological Institute of America: an
Athenian tetradrachm impressed on an uninscribed Fortification tablet, and
the same image incorporated in the emblem of the AIA
For the worldwide online audience, the
Persepolis Fortification Archive Project Weblog provides access to articles
from scholarly and news media about the archive, the lawsuit, and topics in
Achaemenid archaeology and epigraphy: thirty-six entries were posted in the
last year. Persepolis Fortification Archive Project editor Charles Jones
(Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, New York) reports that the blog
has been viewed more than 18,000 times in the last year, by more than 12,000
unique visitors, more than 1,800 of them repeat visitors. It has been viewed
almost 70,000 times since it debuted in October 2006.
The University News Office released a new
press release on the project's collaboration with WSRP in recording the
Aramaic Fortification texts,
with an accompanying video. Online journalistic accounts focus on the
archive's legal situation and its broader implications for other cultural
artifacts; examples are an
article in the Phi Beta Kappa Society's Key Reporter by a lawyer working at
Corcoran and Rowe, the firm representing Iran in the litigation, and
an article in the online journal of the U.S. State Department, America.gov.
Persepolis Fortification Archive Project editorial staff (Azzoni, Dusinberre,
Garrison, Henkelman, Jones, and Stolper) prepared an entry for the Encyclopaedia
Iranica on "Persepolis Administrative Archives," providing an authoritative
description of the Persepolis Fortification and Treasury Archives
and an extensive bibliography of current scholarship on them. Images, texts,
analysis, and other current results also appear in a stream of publications by
project staff and their collaborators, for example,
"Seals Bearing Hieroglyphic Inscriptions from the Persepolis Fortification
Archive" by Mark Garrison and Oriental Institute Egyptologist Robert Ritner,
and "The First Achaemenid Administrative Document Discovered at Persepolis" by
Charles E. Jones and Seunghee Yie, both in ARTA: Achaemenid Research on Texts
and Archaeology; "Archers at Persepolis," by Mark Garrison, in The World of
Achaemenid Persia, edited by J. Curtis and St. John Simpson (London, 2010); and
"New Observations on 'Greeks' in the Achaemenid Empire," by Wouter Henkelman and
Robert Rollinger, and "Ethnic Identity and Ethnic Labelling at Persepolis," by
Wouter Henkelman and me, both in Organisation des pouvoirs et contacts culturels
dans les pays de l'empire achéménide, edited
by P. Briant and M. Chauveau (Paris, 2009).
In last year's Annual Report, I mentioned that I was particularly pleased to
have found a document of a new type, an example of the surprises that the
Persepolis Fortification Archive still has to offer. Now I can report with even
more delight that we have found four other examples of the same type. What began
as an extraordinary sidelight has become a repeating feature of the Persepolis
Fortification Archive's structure and function. This is a well-known phenomenon
in work on ancient Near Eastern texts and objects: finding one clear example of
something newly understood brings other examples out of the shadows. It is a
reminder that the Persepolis Fortification Archive Project is not only producing
emergency records of basic information; it is also making strides in our ability
to interpret the information.

Figure 10. Old Persian tablet from the Persepolis Fortification Archive
illustrated on the dust jacket of
Numerical Notation: A Comparative History (Cambridge, 2009)
Gratifying in another sense is the citation of the unique Old Persian
Fortification text in Stephen Chrisomalis's Numerical Notation: A Comparative
History. The expected audience for the Persepolis Fortification Archive,
students of the Achaemenid Persian empire as a whole or in its parts, is
scattered among academic subdisciplines, but this citation testifies to the
value of the Persepolis Fortification Archive for an unanticipated audience and
unexpected research, and it vindicates the use of electronic techniques and
media.
A sadder note in closing: July brought the startling news of the sudden death of
John Melzian. John was an industrial designer by training and profession and
key member of the InscriptiFact team by inclination and choice. He built and
installed the Persepolis Fortification Archive Project's PTM domes, and he
supported the work of the project with curiosity, perspicacity, realism, and
grace.
See also