Israeli team works to decipher ancient texts

Israeli researchers said on last Thursday they are developing a computer programme to make ancient documents more legible and easily indexed, which could eventually lead to a searchable catalog of archived historical texts. The programme, which is being developed by a team of computer scientists and historians at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, would make the faded, smudged or overwritten words in ancient texts easier to read. The programme can also be used to determine which documents are original through a process called writer identification, said Jihad El-Sana, a researcher on the project and assistant professor of computer science. The technology could also be used to piece together fragments of texts housed in different throughout the world.