The Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (CDLI), in collaboration with Al-Qadisiyah University, is pleased to announce the launch of Access to Cuneiform Texts (CDLI-ACT), directed by Professor Haider ‘Aqīl ‘Abid, Professor Jaafar Jotheri, Dr Émilie Pagé-Perron and Dr Rune Rattenborg.
Through the development and translation of significant parts of the existing CDLI framework, this project will build a first major open access digital interface for the study and dissemination of cuneiform inscriptions in the Arabic language. Once completed, the resource will allow scholars and an interested public in the Arab world access to a digital catalogue of more than 400,000 cuneiform artifacts originating from the Middle East, now spread all over the globe. As an open access online resource, it will enable users to engage with and explore an essential part of their cultural heritage through digital means.
Harnessing a team of assyriologists, archaeologists, digital humanists, translators and computer programmers, this project will augment and expand the Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (https://cdli.earth) with an Arabic language interface and specialised vocabularies. Users will be able to explore, download and reuse data from the CDLI catalogue for research, teaching, and communication. Over time, the proposed upgrade of the CDLI will also allow researchers and cultural heritage specialists to edit and contribute records to the CDLI catalogue through the CDLI crowdsourcing system already in place.
The proposed resource will be developed through development and augmentation of the CDLI website and catalogue, automated and manual professional translation of the website interface and database, coupled with workshops and seminars in Iraq. A test version of the Arabic language interface of the CDLI is expected to be launched towards the end of 2025. Our aim is to introduce a production version in the first half of 2026 coinciding with the Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale, the annual conference of cuneiform specialists, which will be taking place in Baghdad for the first time in history, in the spring of 2026.
CDLI-ACT has received financial support from the British Institute for the Study of Iraq, the General Fund for Assyriology at Wolfson College, Oxford, and through several generous individual donations to the Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative.
If you are interested in supporting this project, contributions to the CDLI-ACT can be made through Open Collective (www.opencollective.com/cdli/projects/cdli-act). For more information, please feel free to contact us at cdli@ames.ox.ac.uk.
November 30, 2025
Posted by Rattenborg, Rune
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