Zuckerman (pictured here) and Lundberg have worked documenting relics in darkened basements, corners and caves. Over the last 20 years, the pair have archived more than 100,000 images of objects and texts from the ancient world.

Locked away in the basement of Beirut’s war-torn national museum, they lay, covered in dirt, dust and several feet of floodwater – ancient stones bearing the first known Phoenician inscriptions and some of the earliest known alphabetic texts.

The stones, dating back to 1,000 B.C., had been hidden away for nearly two decades by courageous curators who moved them, and other national relics, to safety during lulls in the Lebanese civil war.

During this conflict, the national museum sat directly in the crossfire of warring Christians and Muslims between 1975 and 1990. In 1991, curators and archaeologists opened the basement to find that a water leak had left standing water in all of the storage areas. It has taken over a decade for the artifacts to be recovered and restored to their pre-war state.

Making their way through Jordan this past summer, Bruce Zuckerman and Marilyn Lundberg, of USC’s West Semitic Research Project, journeyed to Lebanon at the invitation of the Lebanese Department of Antiquities to produce the first detailed photographic documentation of these ancient stones.

As leading experts in their field, Zuckerman and Lundberg use traditional photographic and advanced computer imaging techniques to record, reclaim and decipher ancient inscriptions.

"Photographing these stones was a fulfillment of a dream I’ve had for 30 years," said Zuckerman, USC associate professor of religion and director of the university’s West Semitic Research Project. "These are some of the most important early inscriptions that we have.

"While the war continued, we had absolutely no idea if they were still in existence. Even after the war was over, we could not be sure whether they remained intact. A well-placed bomb or artillery shell could have destroyed everything," he said.

The inscriptions themselves are mostly dedications inscribed by Phoenician rulers to commemorate their achievements and ancestry.

One text, written in ancient Aramaic, records one of the earliest known West Semitic treaty documents from early biblical times. Another was produced in honor of King Ahiram of Byblos and is the oldest known Phoenician inscription yet to be discovered.

"These documents are the best evidence we have of the ancient world just north of biblical Israel," said Chris Rollston, of the Emmanuel School of Religion in Johnson City, Tenn., a key member of the project who organized theUSC team’s trip and coordinated the proper authorizations. "They are of crucial historical importance."

The three-week expedition – made possible, in part, by funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and assistance from Rollston and John Melzian, an industrial designer who served as the project liaison – placed the USC team in extreme working conditions.

Their journey included heightened security, high humidity, temperatures soaring to 113 degrees Fahrenheit and frequent darkness in the museum basement.

"Working with only one electrical outlet, we were plunged into darkness many times," recalled Lundberg, associate director of USC’s West Semitic Research Project. "Fortunately, all of our equipment is battery-operated. So we could just flick on a couple of flashlights and keep working."

Set up in the dark corners of the museum’s cave-like basement, Zuckerman and Lundberg used a hand-cranked forklift to move the massive ancient stones and captured the vintage inscriptions with cameras outfitted with bellows and hoods, reminiscent of those used during the American Civil War.

But shooting the images was only half the battle.

Getting the film back to the United States safely and undamaged by high-security X-ray inspections posed just as much of a challenge.

Since the United States does not currently accept mail from Lebanon, the team’s multiple batches of film had to travel first through Jordan, then home to Los Angeles, doubling the chances of possible damage.

"Altered environments always make projects like this more difficult," said Lundberg. "So we try to constantly think ahead and do more than we need to, just in case."

Hard work, extreme conditions and adventure certainly are not unfamiliar to this renowned duo.

As a team, their work has taken them throughout the world, including Turkey, Cyprus, Israel, Egypt, Russia, London, Paris and Berlin.

Their accomplishments include detailed photo documentation of the Dead Sea Scrolls; the Leningrad Codex, the oldest complete Hebrew bible in the world; and the oldest known alphabetic inscriptions from Wadi el-Hol, in the Egyptian Sahara.

The recent Lebanese expedition ranked high on the team’s "10 most-wanted" list.

In retrospect, it was Lebanon’s people and restored museum that most impressed the USC researchers.

"We were treated very well as Americans and felt very safe there," said Lundberg.

"I have the greatest admiration for these curators, what they have accomplished and their level of professionalism," added Zuckerman. "They painstakingly restored the artifacts and the entire museum, which was absolutely the most beautiful museum in the Middle East that I’ve ever seen."

Over the next year, the team plans to organize, digitize and catalogue their Lebanese data before it is sent back to Beirut for the government to review and authorize for use.

While photographs – some dating back to the early 1900s – already exist of ancient artifacts, the quality is "generally very poor," said Zuckerman.

"Often it’s difficult to tell what texts read for sure on the basis of these photographs," he said, noting that many books have been based on such sketchy information. "It’s our job to substantially improve that data."

And it’s that precision, approach and level of quality that keep Zuckerman and Lundberg’s phone ringing with continuous requests for detailed documentation.

"Typically, we’re invited to do a project when there’s a level of difficulty involved," said Zuckerman.

Over the last 20 years, the team has accumulated more than 100,000 archived images of objects and texts from the ancient world, which they have made available to scholars, educators, students and the public.

They are also currently working on an image database for the Internet of the future, a project called Inscriptifact.

"We’re building this database for the Internet as it will exist 10 years down the line," said Zuckerman.

"You see, that’s always been our philosophy," he explained. "Fifteen to 20 years ago, we were photographing ancient inscriptions on the assumption that someday we would be able to digitize the material. We deliberately thought in terms of the documentation level for which digital imaging would be ideal and never lost sight of the vision."

The two definitely have their work cut out for them.

"There’s not a year that goes by that at least some interesting inscription doesn’t turn up," said Zuckerman. "And every five to 10 years, a really important inscription comes along."

Later this fall, the researchers plan to visit the British Library in London to discuss a possible future project on an important biblical manuscript.

"We always seem to end up in the basement of some museum or library every summer," Zuckerman said. "I’m not sure where we’ll be heading next, but there are plenty of inscriptions left to do."

For more information on USC’s West Semitic Research Program, or samples of Zuckerman and Lundberg’s digital archives, go to http://www.usc.edu/dept/LAS/wsrp .

Contact Gia Scafidi at (213) 740-9335.