Digital Restoration of Ancient Papyri

TL;DR

This paper presents a digital image processing approach for restoring ancient papyri, enhancing text readability and aiding in the identification of letter patterns, demonstrated through examples including the Dead Sea Scrolls fragment.

Contribution

It introduces a novel combination of edge detection and Fourier filtering techniques for digital restoration of ancient papyri.

Findings

Enhanced readability of damaged papyri images

Successful restoration of Dead Sea Scrolls fragment

Effective reduction of background noise

Abstract

Image processing can be used for digital restoration of ancient papyri, that is, for a restoration performed on their digital images. The digital manipulation allows reducing the background signals and enhancing the readability of texts. In the case of very old and damaged documents, this is fundamental for identification of the patterns of letters. Some examples of restoration, obtained with an image processing which uses edges detection and Fourier filtering, are shown. One of them concerns 7Q5 fragment of the Dead Sea Scrolls.