In 1925, Gustaf Dalman collected 100 (actually 101) photos taken by the German Air Force in 1917 and 1918 into the book One Hundred German Aerial Photographs of Palestine. In addition to the photos, he also described what they depicted, and he cataloged the locations of over 1,200 similar photos taken around the same time.
These photos represent the earliest published aerial photos of the Holy Land. Can AI enhance the experience? Maybe!
First, AI can colorize the photos. Below is what AI imagines the Jordan River looked like in March 1918, based on a historical photo. Compare it with a modern view of the same area, and you see much less vegetation across today’s Jordan Valley, with natural growth confined to a narrow strip around the Jordan’s watercourse. This kind of historical view gives you a better sense of what the area looked like in biblical times, assuming you were a bird. (The AI is also inventing sloppy details, so it’s creating immediacy at the expense of accuracy.) My instruction to the AI (GPT-Image-2) was to make each image look like it was taken with a modern iPhone.
Second, AI can highlight all the features that Dalman mentions in his text. Below is Caesarea with all his annotations highlighted. Excavations at Caesarea wouldn’t happen until the 1950s, so you’re seeing the fishing village that it was at the time.
In the online book, you can click on any of the images to see the original black-and-white photos instead of the colorized AI images, if that’s how you want to roll.
Third, AI can translate the whole book from German into English. I don’t have a snappy image for you here, but it did a much better job than I would have.
Fourth, AI parsed the catalog at the end of the book so that it links to all the original photos at the Bavarian State Archives.
All the data and images for this book are in the public domain (at least in the United States), and the AI-generated images aren’t copyrightable, so you can enjoy and remix as you like. For the sake of clarity, I’m releasing the book under a CC0 license.
I leave you with this view of the Jerusalem’s Old City, which, again, shows much more open space than a modern view. I did have to keep reminding the AI that the Dome of the Rock didn’t have a golden dome at the time. The topography of the City of David (to the left of the Temple Mount) is clearly visible.
