AI TOOL
The AI tool making dead languages spill secrets
A new AI tool called Aeneas is giving historians a serious helping hand when it comes to decoding ancient Roman inscriptions.
These texts, etched into stone monuments and everyday objects, are often damaged, incomplete or just plain missing.
Until now, figuring them out meant relying on memory, guesswork, and lots of time.
But Aeneas is speeding things up.
Built by researchers at Nottingham University and Google DeepMind, it pulls from a massive database of 176,000 inscriptions and uses AI to instantly surface similar examples.
It doesn’t take over the job; it supports historians by pointing to patterns they might’ve missed.
In brief:
Aeneas uses AI to suggest missing text and dates based on a huge archive of Roman inscriptions.
It’s designed to work with historians, not replace them.
Early tests show it can boost both speed and accuracy, and even reveal things researchers hadn’t considered.
Dead language, who dis?
In one example, the tool helped narrow down the date of the Res Gestae Divi Augusti, a key Roman text, with impressive accuracy.
When tested with 23 historians, the results were stronger when they used Aeneas than when working alone.
Aeneas is basically Duolingo for dead emperors.