AI Reveals Secrets of the Past: Reading Ancient Inscriptions

AI Reads Ancient Inscriptions: How Does Aeneas Work?

Ancient inscriptions — texts carved into stone, metal, wood, or ceramics — offer invaluable insights into legal, economic, social, and even ritual life in antiquity. Unfortunately, the passage of time has damaged or fragmented many inscriptions, making them difficult to interpret accurately and leaving gaps in our knowledge.

Enter AI. A large language model called Aeneas, recently presented in Nature, has been designed not only to interpret but also to provide context for Roman inscriptions.

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Secrets from Centuries Ago: What Can AI Do?

Aeneas was trained on nearly 200,000 Latin inscriptions, dated from the 7th century BCE to the 8th century CE, covering a broad geographical area from Portugal to Iraq.

Thanks to this dataset, Aeneas can:

• reconstruct missing characters in inscriptions,
• estimate the date and place of origin,
• identify related inscriptions.

What makes Aeneas stand out is its precision: unlike other models, it was trained specifically on Latin data, which makes its predictions more accurate and less prone to hallucinations.

Why Is Aeneas More Accurate Than Other AI Models?

To test its performance, researchers conducted two case studies: Aeneas interpreted a complex inscription using Reflectance Transformation Imaging (RTI), a method that analyzes inscriptions through light behavior.

In the second, it analyzed an altar from Mainz, testing its ability to track changes over time and interpret inscriptions in context.

“In both cases, Aeneas was able to identify relevant epigraphic parallels and generate accurate predictions, formulating and presenting scholarly hypotheses in a quantitative way. These case studies highlight Aeneas’s versatility across different epigraphic contexts. Whether applied to an imperial monument or a provincial votive inscription, Aeneas mirrors the analytical process of an epigrapher, complementing traditional methodologies and producing accurate, meaningful conclusions,” the study notes.

Historians confirmed that Aeneas can integrate smoothly into academic workflows and provide transformative support for historical research.

A Breakthrough in History and Archaeology: What’s Next for Aeneas?

In short, the model performed well in diverse contexts, from imperial monuments to local inscriptions. Researchers highlight that Aeneas is a unique tool trained on a specialized Latin dataset, which makes it less prone to errors and fabrication compared to other AI systems.

For now, Aeneas has been made available to other researchers and students, but its future applications remain open. What is clear is that it represents a powerful new ally for historians.

“In conclusion, Aeneas significantly enhances collaboration between human experts and AI, in a mutually enriching exchange between the sciences and the humanities,” the paper states.

Read the original article: AI odsłania sekrety przeszłości. Będzie odczytywać starożytne inskrypcje