Can modern Artificial Intelligence unlock the voices of ancient merchants? Join the "Deep Past Challenge" and compete for $50,000 by translating Akkadian cuneiform into English.
Overview
- Competition: Deep Past Challenge - Translate Akkadian to English
- Prize Pool: $50,000
- Deadline: March 23, 2026
- Challenge: Build an AI model to translate Old Assyrian business records.
📜 The Challenge: Bridging 4,000 Years with AI
History is often written by kings, but daily life is recorded by merchants. In this groundbreaking competition, data scientists and linguists are invited to solve a 4,000-year-old puzzle. The Deep Past Challenge asks a simple but profound question: Can AI decode ancient business records?
Your mission is to develop a machine translation system capable of converting Old Assyrian—a dialect of the extinct Akkadian language—directly into modern English.
The Data: 8,000 Cuneiform Texts
Participants will work with a unique dataset consisting of 8,000 cuneiform texts. These aren't just random inscriptions; they are the receipts, contracts, and letters of ancient Assyrian merchants. By training your models on this data, you aren't just processing text; you are reconstructing the economic heartbeat of the ancient world.
💡 Why This Matters
This competition is about more than just Natural Language Processing (NLP). It is a digital preservation effort.
- Revive Lost Languages: Support new methods for decoding languages that have long been overlooked by mainstream tech.
- Uncover Daily Life: Move beyond royal decrees to understand the "regular people" of antiquity.
- Advance Low-Resource NLP: Developing models for ancient languages pushes the boundaries of what AI can do with limited training data.
🏆 Prizes and Timeline
The competition offers a significant incentive for teams who can crack the code.
- Total Prize Pool: $50,000
- Entry Deadline: March 23, 2026
Whether you are a machine learning engineer, a computational linguist, or a history buff with coding skills, this is your chance to make a tangible contribution to the humanities.
🚀 How to Participate
Ready to make history? Don't let these voices remain silent. Register today, access the dataset, and start building the bridge between the clay tablets of the past and the digital future.
Join the Deep Past Challenge Here: