Automatic Writer Identification of Ancient Greek Inscriptions

Authors:
Michail Panagopoulos;Constantin Papaodysseus;Panayiotis Rousopoulos;Dimitra Dafi;Stephen Tracy
Affiliations:
National Technical University of Athens, Athens;National Technical University of Athens, Athens;National Techncal University of Athens, Athens;National Technical University of Athens, Athens;American School of Classical Studies at Athens, Athens
Venue:
IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence
Year:
2009

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Abstract

This paper introduces a novel methodology for the classification of ancient Greek inscriptions according to the writer who carved them. Inscription writer identification is crucial for dating the written content, which in turn is of fundamental importance in the sciences of history and archaeology. To achieve this, we first compute an ideal or "platonic” prototype for the letters of each inscription separately. Next, statistical criteria are introduced to reject the hypothesis that two inscriptions are carved by the same writer. In this way, we can determine the number of distinct writers who carved a given ensemble of inscriptions. Next, maximum likelihood considerations are employed to attribute all inscriptions in the collection to the respective writers. The method has been applied to 24 Ancient Athenian inscriptions and attributed these inscriptions to six different identified hands in full accordance with expert epigraphists' opinions.