Cornell University Library hosts many squeezes collected during the Cornell Expedition to Asia Minor and the Assyro-Babylonian Orient (1907-1908). The main focus of the Expedition was on pre-classical history and archaeology and they made copies of numerous hieroglyphic Luwian inscriptions (called Hittite inscriptions at the time), many newly discovered, which were published in 1911. However, at the beginning of the Expedition, they spent two weeks securing a squeeze of the Res Gestae of the emperor Augustus as inscribed on the walls of the temple of Rome and Augustus in Ancyra (modern Ankara, Turkey), known as the Monumentum Ancyranum. 3D reconstructions now allow scholars and students to have access to a copy of this major inscription made at a time when the Monumentum Ancyranum was much better preserved than it is today.
Investigators:
- Benjamin Anderson, Department of History of Art and Visual Studies
- Eric Rebillard, Department of Classics