This paper presents the results of recent imaging work on two astronomical inscriptions from Berlin's Antikensammlung and the British Museum: a parapegma from Miletus and a late antique portable sundial. It briefly introduces the inexpensive and powerful process of Reflectance Transformation Imaging (RTI), and illustrates the effectiveness of this relatively simple photographic method for epigraphic analysis. Using RTI, the authors were able to tease out otherwise illegible characters. The technique was particularly successful in the case of the sundial, increasing the legible number of place names by nearly twenty percent over the previous edition, and also improving on many latitude readings for the regions for which the dial was theoretically usable.

This presentation is based on work co-authored by George Bevan.