Medieval History
It's like something out of "The Da Vinci Code": Hundreds of thousands of fragments from medieval religious scrolls are scattered across the globe. How will scholars put them back together?
The answer, according to scientists at Tel Aviv University, is to use computer software based on facial recognition technology. But instead of recognizing faces, this software recognizes fragments thought to be part of the same work. Then, the program virtually "glues" the pieces back together.
This enables researchers to digitally join a collection of more than 200,000 fragmentary Jewish texts, called the Cairo Genizah, found in the late 1800s in the Ben Ezra Synagogue in Cairo. The Cairo Genizah texts date from the ninth to the 19th centuries, and they're dispersed amongst more than 70 libraries worldwide. Researchers will report on their progress in digitally reuniting the Cairo Genizah during the second week in November at the 2011 IEEE International Conference on Computer Vision in Barcelona.
Click here to read this article from LiveScience
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Medieval History
Computers Piece Together Scattered Medieval Scrolls
The answer, according to scientists at Tel Aviv University, is to use computer software based on facial recognition technology. But instead of recognizing faces, this software recognizes fragments thought to be part of the same work. Then, the program virtually "glues" the pieces back together.
This enables researchers to digitally join a collection of more than 200,000 fragmentary Jewish texts, called the Cairo Genizah, found in the late 1800s in the Ben Ezra Synagogue in Cairo. The Cairo Genizah texts date from the ninth to the 19th centuries, and they're dispersed amongst more than 70 libraries worldwide. Researchers will report on their progress in digitally reuniting the Cairo Genizah during the second week in November at the 2011 IEEE International Conference on Computer Vision in Barcelona.
Click here to read this article from LiveScience
- Israeli Library Unveils Medieval Manuscript Collection Discovered In Afghanistan
A trove of ancient manuscripts in Hebrew characters rescued from caves in a Taliban stronghold in northern Afghanistan is providing the first physical evidence of a Jewish community that thrived there a thousand years ago. On Thursday Israel's...
- A Deathbed Will From Medieval Cairo
In April 1143, a well off Egyptian woman made some out-of-the-ordinary requests from her deathbed. Anyone who elects to leave instructions in a will obviously has something to bequeath that is worth recording. After S.D. Goitein discovered numerous...
- Mystery Of Dead Sea Scroll Authors Possibly Solved
The Dead Sea Scrolls may have been written, at least in part, by a sectarian group called the Essenes, according to nearly 200 textiles discovered in caves at Qumran, in the West Bank, where the religious texts had been stored. Scholars are divided about...
- Israel Computer Solves Jigsaw Of Letters, Prayers Scattered For Centuries
Thousands of fragments of centuries-old Jewish texts, from shopping lists to historical documents, are being joined together using new software. The scraps of the Cairo Genizah being cataloged include a letter from a wife complaining about her husband...
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