This project proposes to expand on Eduardo Escobar’s (PhD Candidate, NES) “Cuneiform De-Coded” software, which analyzes base values and hidden meanings within ancient texts that utilize the cuneiform script—the world’s first writing system. Like Chinese, and other script-based languages, the cuneiform script concealed multiple meanings within a single sign; for example, the sign “A,” in addition to its phonetic value /a/ can mean “water” and “son”; “A” was also an element in dozens of compound sign combinations.

We are a collaborative and multidisciplinary research project dedicated to preserving, digitizing, transcribing, translating, analyzing, and publishing manuscripts related to two slave conspiracies that occurred at the Pointe Coupee Post in 1791 and 1795. We have digitized more than 1800 folio pages in French and Spanish related to these two conspiracies and crowdsourced their transcription and translation. From these sources, we have processed geospatial, demographic, and forensic information relevant to persons, places, and events involved in the conspiracies.