Renovation and expansion of the facilities of the Digital Restoration Initiative (DRI), a cultural heritage imaging and analysis lab, as well as the acquisition of imaging tools and equipment. The outcomes would enable the establishment of the “Ancient Worlds Now” consortium, which is dedicated to training and researching non-invasive analysis of delicate materials that hitherto have eluded research.

Advancing technologies now make it possible to image some of the world’s most fragile heritage items without inflicting harm, providing scholarly access to rich visual representations for study. Unfortunately, no facility exists specifically for the non-invasive imaging of friable objects or for investigating new technical approaches to the unique challenges they pose. The Digital Restoration Initiative (DRI), led by Professor Brent Seales at the University of Kentucky, seeks funding to fill this gap by creating a highly specialized, object-centered digital humanities laboratory focused on the non-destructive imaging and “virtual unwrapping” of damaged manuscripts and other delicate heritage objects, such as scrolls from Herculaneum.

The creation of a working group of scholars using non-invasive imaging methods to analyze ancient manuscripts.

Over the past two decades, much progress has been made in non-invasive imaging techniques to reveal unreadable text, especially in multispectral (MSI) imaging to bring out erased or faded writing, and in micro-CT, to reveal writing in unopened manuscripts. This grant will establish a working group of 13 scholars, curators, and metadata specialists who are currently using enhanced images of ancient manuscripts, from the Dead Sea Scrolls to the Herculaneum Papyri, the Living Gospel of Mani, and Old Nubian literature. Through a series of monthly Zoom meetings and a summer workshop at the University of Iowa Center for the Book, we will establish best practices for born-digital editions of texts using enhanced images, to show how transcribed text fits into the structure of an imaged manuscript, even if not visible to the naked eye, and to link editorial transcription choices to particular images, enabling others to make an informed, critical reading of these otherwise inaccessible writings.