Specifically for cuneiform, there are multiple efforts, covering roughly the time period you mentioned. There is this post, [1], and [2].
There are probably around 1-2 million cuneiform tablets that have been found so far.
Many of them complete, but even more of them as fragments.
Those fragments mostly just sit around in store rooms. It's a giant puzzle few people even have enough knowledge to attempt.
More than $5 million, probably less than $100 million, probably - would need a team of qualified experts to know what to photograph and record, a team trained to handle delicate and valuable artifacts, IT people, machine learning experts, gophers, grunts, and finally a team of people to work with institutions.
It's not a super complex endeavor, logistically speaking.
I don't think it'll ever happen. Some institutions would resist being part of any third party scaled up attempt to record things, others would demand editorial control, and the most asinine petty politics would gum things up.
If only there was a billionaire on #nostr to take the lead in setting up a project like this 🤔
🫣 at nostr:npub1sg6plzptd64u62a878hep2kev88swjh3tw00gjsfl8f237lmu63q0uf63m
