Rediscovery of Babylon epic poem is a reason to cheer AI
ALAMY
'Like the sea, Babylon proffers her yield / Like a garden of fruit, she flourishes in her charms / Like a wave, her swell brings her bounties rolling in.'
These words, written around 3,000 years ago, were known by heart by people in the Babylonian empire for centuries. They have just been recovered with the help of AI. The words form part of a 250-line poem deciphered from fragments of hundreds of cuneiform tablets discovered in the library of Sippar, a lost city 40 miles north of Baghdad. Without AI, says Professor Enrique Jiménez, of Ludwig-Maximilians University, the joint Iraqi- German project would have taken decades.
• Inside the library where cutting-edge tech is unlocking the secrets of ancient scrolls
Dating from 300 years before the Iliad and the Odyssey, the poem was recovered from 30 separate manuscripts written over a 600-year period. This suggests that it was a work of great importance, possibly the Babylonian equivalent of Greece's Homeric hymns and Rome's Aeneid. Indeed, it appears to have been on the Babylonian school curriculum, some of the research sources being schoolchildren's tablets. Such texts were learned by heart at the time.
That's partly why the find is so exciting: it's unusual for such a significant piece of literature to be lost and then to resurface. But the poem is also a powerful literary work, using vivid language reminiscent of the Psalms to bring the city and its fertile agricultural hinterland to life. And it reveals some fascinating features of Babylonian society, such as the importance of women priests and the respect accorded to foreigners.
Humanity is understandably alarmed by AI's potential to shake contemporary civilisation to its foundations, and so tends to focus on the threats it may pose. But it is important also to remember its many upsides, such as its potential for revealing the lost cultural riches of ancient civilisation. Like fruitful Babylon, AI has much to yield.
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