SOAS Ancient Near East Library

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

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.

Tuesday, 31 May 2011

Was the world's first museum in Ur?

Report on Sir Leonard Woolley's excavations at Ur in the 1920's, focusing on the discovery of what seems to be the world's oldest museum, dating from around 530 BC.
Artifacts from Ur's earlier history seem to have been purposefully collected by Princess Ennigaldi, daughter of Nabonidus, the last king of the Neo-Babylonian Empire.
The article also discusses the motives for making such a collection. Ur in this last phase of its development was, according to Woolley, obsessed by its history. The rulers of the city preferred to dwell on past glories and not look to the threatening future ...

Monday, 23 May 2011

Archaeology along the Hittite Way

Read an account of discoveries old and new in Anatolia - the heartland of the ancient Hittite Empire - and how to make the most of a visit to the sites (from the Archaeology News Network blog)

Thursday, 19 May 2011

Babylonian magic bowls : new database

The University of Southhampton's Virtual Magic Bowl Archive (VMBA) is launching a new database to record Jewish and non-Jewish personal names found in Babylonian incantation bowls from the 5th to 8th centuries CE, compiled as part of a British-Israeli research project (BIRAX).

Go to the VMBA website to find out about the new project and how to contribute.

You can also look at the results of a previous project - Aramaic Magical Texts from Late Antiquiry (AMTLA)