Two Israeli researchers have been visiting the museum this week to study the inscription, part of a ''unique'' 2500 year old medical text, amid growing international interest in the museum's extensive collection of cuneiform writings.
The museum has about 150 cuneiform tablets and inscriptions, the largest known collection of its kind in the southern hemisphere.
The PhD student researchers, Peter Zilberg and Anna Perdibon, are from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and the medical text includes an incantation to ward off a demon called Lamastu.
This demon was believed to attack women in childbirth and newborn babies.
Mr Zilberg said many cuneiform tablets provided medical information on dealing with different illnesses.
But the comprehensive nature of the cuneiform information provided on the Otago Museum medical text made it unique, he added.
On one side of the clay tablet is an incantation, apparently meant to be read aloud and, on the other, is a ''prescription'' for a related herbal medication.
With his PhD supervisor, Prof Wayne Horowitz, a previous visitor to the museum, Mr Zilberg has finished a preliminary translation of this piece, from an ancient land now part of modern Iraq. Mr Zilberg was moved by such ancient objects.
''It's like a flashlight on something that happened in the past.''
The researchers have also been examining another ancient cuneiform text at the museum, of about 200 lines, on a 2600 year old clay cylinder.
They have identified this as a royal inscription from the reign of King Nebuchadnezzar, related to building activities in his capital, Babylon.
Cuneiform was used throughout the Ancient Near East from before 3000BC until the first or second century AD.