Unearth Ancient VoicesDiscover, Translate, andReimagine the Past
The Deep Past Challenge is a machine learning and language translation competition unlocking the 4,000-year-old trade records of Assyrian vendors. Thousands of cuneiform texts remain untranslated—help us bring their stories to light.
Our Story ↓
Our Story
4000 years ago, the world's first commercial civilization was thriving. Now, it's time to let its voices speak again.
In the early second millennium BCE, long before Rome or Athens, merchants from the city of Assur built a vast trade network stretching across the Middle East. They left behind thousands of clay tablets at the site of ancient Kanesh—contracts, letters, loans, receipts—each written in cuneiform script, each bearing witness to a living world of commerce, conflict, and kinship.
These are ledgers. Courtroom testimonies. Heated arguments between fathers and sons. Tender messages between husbands and wives. Each tablet records a moment in the life of real people:
And yet most of these voices remain unread.
Most of these tablets have not been read in four thousand years. The vast majority lie untranslated in museum storerooms or digitized in unreadable formats—waiting. Not because they are unimportant, but because there are fewer than twenty people alive today who can read them.
That's where you come in.
The Deep Past Challenge invites you to build machine translation systems that can unlock this archive. Every word you help translate brings us closer to understanding how ancient trade, law, family, and technology once intertwined.
This isn't just a language task. It's the recovery of a lost world. Join us to help unearth its ancient voices. Help history speak again.
In the early second millennium BCE, long before Rome or Athens, merchants from the city of Assur built a vast trade network stretching across the Middle East. They left behind thousands of clay tablets at the site of ancient Kanesh—contracts, letters, loans, receipts—each written in cuneiform script, each bearing witness to a living world of commerce, conflict, and kinship.
These are ledgers. Courtroom testimonies. Heated arguments between fathers and sons. Tender messages between husbands and wives. Each tablet records a moment in the life of real people:
- Aššur-nada, a headstrong son navigating the pressures of trade in Kanesh.
- Aššur-idi, his aging father in Assur, torn between temple duties and family expectations.
- Ištar-Lamassi, a daughter and diplomatic bridge, married into another merchant dynasty.
- Ennam-Aššur, whose brother defrauded him and who was killed during a smuggling operation that sought to recover lost fortunes.
And yet most of these voices remain unread.
Most of these tablets have not been read in four thousand years. The vast majority lie untranslated in museum storerooms or digitized in unreadable formats—waiting. Not because they are unimportant, but because there are fewer than twenty people alive today who can read them.
That's where you come in.
The Deep Past Challenge invites you to build machine translation systems that can unlock this archive. Every word you help translate brings us closer to understanding how ancient trade, law, family, and technology once intertwined.
This isn't just a language task. It's the recovery of a lost world. Join us to help unearth its ancient voices. Help history speak again.