SOAS Ancient Near East Library: June 2011

Wednesday 29 June 2011

More on Ur

Report from Discovery News on the threats (both man-made and natural) to the archaeological sites at Ur, and on plans for future excavations and tourism in the region

Thursday 23 June 2011

News from the Comprehensive Aramaic Lexicon

The Comprehensive Aramaic Lexicon Project is back on-line.

We apologize for the unavailability of our system during the six weeks between early May and mid-June, 2011. The CAL server was struck by a hacker from an ISP in London, UK precisely on the day that Dr. Kaufman left the country, apparently simply because he or she wanted a complete copy of our online version of Sokoloff'sDJPA and wanted to save the $100 for the second edition and received instead an early draft of the first edition, while totally compromising the system. There is no indication that the identity of any of our users was looked for or their own privacy comprised in any way. The length of the delay is a direct function of the fact that we have failed to have any NEH funding renewed for many years now and the CAL continues on solely as a labor of love without any paid researchers.

Via: AWOL - The Ancient World Online (Charles Ellwood Jones) / CC BY-NC-SA 3.0

Thursday 16 June 2011

Hear ancient Akkadian spoken ...

Dr Irving Finkel, Assistant Keeper Ancient Mesopotamian (i.e. Sumerian, Babylonian and Assyrian) script, languages and cultures at the British Museum, gives his interpretation of the ancient Akkadian language in this video from the BBC World Service
Click HERE to watch and listen

Tuesday 14 June 2011

The Ancient World in JSTOR

This is the full list of journals in JSTOR with substantial representation of the Ancient World

Auction Catalogs (Beta)

JSTOR is collaborating with the Frick Collection and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in a pilot project funded by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to understand how auction catalogs can be best preserved for the long-term and made most easily accessible for scholarly use. Auctioncatalogs are vital for provenance research as well as for the study of art markets and the history of collecting.

Upcoming Content

Historische Sprachforschung / Historical Linguistics
Revue Archeologique

Via: AWOL - The Ancient World Online (Charles Ellwood Jones) / CC BY-NC-SA 3.0

Thursday 9 June 2011

The Nimrud Ivories: online article

An article from the al-Arabiya News website on the Nimrud ivories, which are among the many treasures in the British Museum.
The article also looks at the discovery of the ivories and, in particular, the excavations that were carried out between 1949 and 1963 by Max Mallowan, assisted by his wife, crime-novelist Agatha Christie

Friday 3 June 2011

Orientalia Suecana: new open-access content

Orientalia Suecana

This international journal of Indological, Iranian, Semitic, Sinological and Turkic studies (founded in 1952 and published by Uppsala University in Sweden) is now making recent content available online through open-access.

The open-access content begins with Vol.58 (2009).

The Library has print copies also from Vol.1 to Vol.59 at Per 5 / 79769

You have to download each volume individually via the links on the journal homepage in order to view the full-text.

Wednesday 1 June 2011

ORACC: The Open Richly Annotated Cuneiform Corpus

The Open Richly Annotated Cuneiform Corpus (ORACC) is a corpus-building cooperative which provides facilities and support for the creation of free online editions of cuneiform texts

It comprises a workspace and tool-kit for the development of a complete corpus of cuneiform whose rich annotation and open licensing support the next generation of scholarly research.

ORACC is made up of the following resources:

AEB: Assyrian Empire Builders

Two Assyrian shield-bearers. Detail from a wall painting at the palace of Til-Barsip, room XLVII; reign of Tiglathpileser III (744-727 BC). Now in the Louvre, AO 23011 (photo by Karen Radner)

This website places the letters exchanged between Sargon II, king of Assyria (721-705 BC), and his governors and magnates in their historical and cultural context and provides resources and materials for their study.

Amarna: The Amarna Tablets

Shrine-stela of Amenhotep III and queen Tiye (detail), Amarna c.1340 BC. (British Museum EA 57399)

The Amarna corpus comprises transliterations of the 380 cuneiform tablets found at Tell el-Amarna (ancient Akhetaten) in Egypt. It contains diplomatic correspondence and Akkadian scholarly works from the mid-14th century BC and was kindly donated to Oracc by Shlomo Izre'el.

CAMS: Corpus of Ancient Mesopotamian Scholarship

Drawing of a detail from a tablet describing how to make a ritual kettle drum from a bull's hide, Uruk c.200 BC (TCL 6, 47)

Starting with tablets from Huzirina, Kalhu, and Uruk for the Geography of Knowledge project, CAMS will eventually comprise editions and translations of a wide range of Mesopotamian scholarly writings.

CDLI: The Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative

CDLI image of Proto-Cuneiform tablet from Uruk, W20367

The foundational online cataloging and archiving project for the cuneiform corpus. The Oracc presentation is based directly on public CDLI data which is updated nightly.

CTIJ: Cuneiform Texts Mentioning Israelites, Judeans, and Other Related Groups
CTIJ studies cuneiform texts and onomastic data pertaining to Israelites, Judeans, and Related Population Groups during the Neo-Assyrian, Neo- and Late Babylonian, and Achaemenid Periods (744-330 BCE).

DCCLT: Digital Corpus of Cuneiform Lexical Texts

Drawing of a list of vessels from Archaic Uruk, circa 3500 BCE

DCCLT provides editions and translations of lexical texts (word lists and sign lists) from all periods of cuneiform writing.

DCCMT: Digital Corpus of Cuneiform Mathematical Texts

Photo of an Old Babylonian school exercise on calculating the area of a triangle (Ashmolean 1931.91)

DCCMT aims to present transliterations and translations of around a thousand published cuneiform mathematical tablets.

ePSD: electronic Pennsylvania Sumerian Dictionary

Detail photo of an ancient forerunner of a Sumerian dictionary, Nippur, circa 1730 BCE

The PSD is preparing an exhaustive dictionary of the Sumerian language which aims to be useful to non-specialists as well as Sumerologists.

GKAB: The Geography of Knowledge in Assyria and Babylonia
The AHRC-funded GKAB project studies Assyro-Babylonian scholarship by editing the contents of four cuneiform libraries in the Corpus of Ancient Mesopotamian Scholarship and by analysing their changing socio-political contexts.

HBT2: HBTIN L2

A personal seal stamped into a cuneiform tablet from Hellenistic Uruk (BM 105203, detail).

HBTIN presents the texts, iconography and onomastic data in the cuneiform documentation from Hellenistic Babylonia, primarily from Uruk. HBTIN texts form the demonstrator corpus of the Berkeley Prosopography Service (BPS).

HBTIN: Hellenistic Babylonia: Texts, Iconography, Names

K&P: Knowledge and Power in the Neo-Assyrian Empire

An Assyrian king with his scribes and scholars, as imagined in the mid-19th century. (A.H. Layard, A Second Series of the Monuments of Nineveh, London 1853, pl. 2 detail, after a sketch by J. Fergusson).

This website presents Neo-Assyrian scholars' letters, queries, and reports to their kings in seventh-century Nineveh and provides resources to support their use in undergraduate teaching.

OGSL: Oracc Global Sign List

LAK 25, from A. Deimel, Liste der Archaische Keilschriftzeichen.

Provides a global registry of sign names, variants and readings for use by ORACC.

Qcat: The Q Catalogue

The letter Q; icon of the Orac Qcat project.

The Q catalogue provides a global registry of compositions rather than objects, supporting the creation of scores on Oracc.

SAAo: State Archives of Assyria Online

A pair of Assyrian scribes filing reports after the conquest of a Babylonian city, Nimrud, 8th century BC (BM ANE 118882)

An open-access web resource that aims to make the rich Neo-Assyrian materials found in the royal archives of Nineveh, and elsewhere, more widely accessible. Portals include Knowledge and Power and Assyrian Empire Builders.