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maandag, mei 15, 2023

Translating Akkadian clay tablet with chatGPT?



 

Translating old clay tablet by using chatGPT.

 

You might have heard how I asked chatGPT to pose as a Jehovah's
Witness, write a "witnessing letter" with 2 or 3 bible scriptures in
it, and then translate that letter into an English rap song, Eminem
style.  Or you might have missed that news. My point is, I like to
play with AI's. 

 

I'm more and more stupefied by how much AI models like OpenAI's
chatGPT, Google's BARD, and Facebooks LLaMMa and others are capable
of. 

 

An Old Karen in a Museum.

I feel the word "Karen" as a derogatory name for a complaining lady
is a recent invention. If I had known this name in 2008, I would have
used it to describe an elderly lady who ruined my visit to the
British Museum. 

 

You see, I was visiting the museum specifically to see the "Babylon:
Myth and Reality" exhibition. In this exhibition I came upon a clay
tablet that was on loan from some other museum or private collector. 

 

To this day I haven't been able to find this clay tablet again. The
reason is that I didn't take a photograph of this tablet and the
label that no doubt would explain its providence and current owner,
is because a Karen saw me taking photographs and told me to stop. She
might have seen this No Flashlight sign:


 

[no-flash-cjr]


 She probably mistook this sign fort this No Photographs sign:

[1610451286_61713]


Me, being the shy 20 something year old nerd that I was, didn't
explain to her the difference between these signs. I also didn't
laugh at her. I put my camera away and refocused on the clay tablet
in front of me. 

 

Silly, stupid, me. 

 

A clay tablet that supports an unlikely Bible account

 

You see, that particular tablet, it couldn't have been bigger than my
hand, was a very interesting one. It happens to pertain to the
Biblical account of King Manasseh of Judah (716-662 B.C.E.). 

 

The Bible, in the second book of Chronicles 33:10, 11 tells us:

     

    10 Jehovah kept speaking to Manasseh and his people, but they
    paid no attention. 

    11 So Jehovah brought against them the army chiefs of the king of
    Assyria, and they captured Manasseh with hooks and bound him with
    two copper fetters and took him to Babylon. 

     

The city Babylon was at this time also under Assyrian control. The
clay tablet that I mentioned earlier is only making an indirect
 reference to Manasseh. The tablet was written, or more likely,
dictated, by an Assyrian prince who happens to be in jail with
Manasseh in an adjacent cell.  And this prince is complaining,
because he is still in prison while this rebellious has-been king
that was in the cell next to his, has now been released from prison
and on his way back to his country, back to king-ing again! 

 

Why is this so interesting to me? 


Second Chronicles chapter 33 continues:

 

    12 In his distress, he begged Jehovah his God for favor and kept
    humbling himself greatly before the God of his forefathers.

    13 He kept praying to Him, and He was moved by his entreaty and
    heard his request for favor, and He restored him to Jerusalem to
    his kingship. Then Manasseh came to know that Jehovah is the true
    God.

  

So King Manasseh does a remarkable thing while in prison! He feels
genuinely sorry for his sins and repents. He keeps praying to his
god, till he is restored as king in Judah. 

 

Assyrians where never that lenient. Never. But this time, they were.
And there is evidence in that clay tablet. If only I could find that
tablet again.

 

ChatGPT to the rescue?

 

There are multiple archives and search engines that make an effort in
indexing all known cuneiform clay tablets from long-gone
civilizations like Mitanni, Assyria, Babylonia, Elam and so forth. 

I tried my luck with the Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative.

Problem number one. When I Search for "Manasseh" I get 0 hits. 

So, apparently many tablets have been digitized, there is either no
digital translation, or it might be copyrighted and therefore not on
this open platform? 

I need to find the Akkadian (the scientific name of the Assyrian and
Babylonian language) cuneiform spelling for "Manasseh" in order to
search here.

I try to guide chatGPT into the right state of mind, by starting
easy: 

 

    Do you have access to catalogues of ancient clay tablets from
    Babylonia, Assyria and Mitanni?

[_1]

 

Too bad . No direct access to catalogues. 

 

That means I will need to go and search manually. 

 

    Can you speculate on how the biblical name of king Manasseh of
    Judah would have been written in Babylonian Cuneiform?

[_2]

 

Okay, so chatGPT comes up with the variant spelling " (ma-na-si-i
or ma-an-si-i)". When I search on Wikipedia, I find another
spelling:  Menasi [me-na-si-i]. 

 

So, let's find out if chatGPT finds this also a plausible
translation?

 

    I found a source that gave the name as   Menasi [me-na-si-i];
    Does that sound plausible to you ?

[_3]



I've written before about he fact that you should always check
whatever information chatGPT comes up with, because it is known to
"hallucinate".

 

So, I check the one Akkadian word that I happen to remember:

 

    can you tell me the meaning of the akkadian word Lugal ?

[_4]



Okay, that is spot on. 

 Continuing our search, I now have three variant spellings of
Manasseh to throw at CDLI: 

 1. me-na-si-i  
 2. ma-na-si-i
 3. ma-an-si-i

 

By using these variants, I find a lot of hits. Me-na-si-I, the first
spelling variant, gives me 4 hits. The very first one is a "RINAP 4
Esarhaddon 001, ex. 001 (P422293)" prism from King Esarhaddon, a
known contemporary of Manasseh of Juda. Unfortunately, a translation
is lacking. 

 

Let's find out if chatGPT can do not just words, but whole sentences:

[_5]



Holy Moly  


It knows Akkadian as well?!?

 

Too bad this is not the King Manasseh of Judah, but instead "Menasi
of Assur". 

 

I don't have time now to go through all these clay tablets and
translate them with chatGPT, but I'm dreaming of a plugin that
automatically translates and published the translation of ancient
cuneiform clay tablets.

 

Keep dreaming kids, and keep building.

 

 

 

Gepost door Jan Romme op 8:31 p.m. # #
Labels: Akkadian, Assyrian, Babylonian, chatGPT, Clay tablet,
cuneiform, translation
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