Google has launched an ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic translator based on machine learning.
The translator is part of Google's art and culture app "Fabricius", which was developed through the Ubisoft Hieroglyphics Project, which was first launched at the British Museum in 2017.
Working with Google, Macquarie University's Australian Egyptology Centre, Psycle Interactive, Ubisoft and Egyptologists around the world, the project aims to identify the possibility of using machine learning to process and collate the language of the ancient Egyptians.
The holy episography hieroglyphs were the official writing system of ancient Egypt, with the first decipherable sentences dating back to the Second Dynasty (28th century BC). Hieroglyphs combine text, syllables, and alphabetic elements and have more than 1000 different characters.
With the final closure of pagan temples throughout Egypt in the 5th century, knowledge of hieroglyphs disappeared until the 20s of the 19th century when Jean-François Champollion deciphered hieroglyphs with the help of the Rosetta Stone.
Fabricius allows users to upload images of hieroglyphs, which the software then tries to match against symbols in a database and analyze history and definitions to decipher different meanings.
Dr Alex Woods from the Australian Egyptology Centre told the BBC: "Digitising textual material that hitherto existed only in handwritten books would revolutionise the way Egyptologists do business. Digitizing and annotating text may help us reconstruct broken text on walls or even discover text we didn't know existed. ”