Cuneiform Research Papers - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Community detection is a major issue in network analysis. This paper combines a socio-historical approach with an experimental reconstruction of programs to investigate the early automation of clique detection algorithms, which remains... more

Community detection is a major issue in network analysis. This paper combines a socio-historical approach with an experimental reconstruction of programs to investigate the early automation of clique detection algorithms, which remains one of the unsolved NP-complete problems today. The research led by the archaeologist Jean-Claude Gardin from the 1950s on non-numerical information and graph analysis is retraced to demonstrate the early contributions of social sciences and humanities. The limited recognition and reception of Gardin’s innovative computer application to the humanities are addressed through two factors, in addition to the effects of historiography and bibliographies on the recording, discoverability, and reuse of scientific productions: 1) funding policies, evidenced by the transfer of research effort on graph applications from temporary interdisciplinary spaces to disciplinary organizations related to the then-emerging field of computer science; and 2) the erratic careers of algorithms, in which efficiency, flaws, corrections, and authors’ status, were determining factors.

This article focuses on the spellings of the 3 sg. pres. form of Gtn-stem of the verb apālu(m) «to pay» in one of the legal formulas from the Neo-Babylonian texts. This form in some documents from the archives of the city of Ur has a... more

This article focuses on the spellings of the 3 sg. pres. form of Gtn-stem of the verb apālu(m) «to pay» in one of the legal formulas from the Neo-Babylonian texts. This form in some documents from the archives of the city of Ur has a spelling with an unusual realization of Iʔ that when in contact with -t- of the infix gives sometimes the spelling of imtanappal.

The recorded family division agreement in a deceased estate encompasses a variety of components, mechanisms and details ranging from elementary to lengthy and complex ones. Moreover, the agreement is drafted in accordance with the... more

The recorded family division agreement in a deceased estate encompasses a variety of
components, mechanisms and details ranging from elementary to lengthy and complex
ones. Moreover, the agreement is drafted in accordance with the contractual parties’
particular oral agreement and the scribe’s idiosyncratic inclusion of some of the detail
of the oral agreement. A specific methodology is devised in order to analyse the content
of the family deceased division agreements.Thus the aim and purpose of this content
analysis methodology is to simplify the analysis of old Babylonian division agreements.
In this article, special attention is accorded to the creation of a methodology, termed the
analysis model, for the analysis and study of the content of family deceased division
agreements. Within this framework, firstly the obligatory essential elements of a family
deceased division agreement are identified and then other aspects and elements of the
agreement are identified and studied in different groups, named the natural and incidental
elements, to reflect new perspectives on the division agreement’s meaning, purpose and
spirit in ancient Babylonian urban life.

In two different treatments of the Nuzi contract HSS V 67, E. A. Speiser provided two different transliterations and translations of a key phrase without giving his reasons for the revision. It turns out that the text in question is... more

In two different treatments of the Nuzi contract HSS V 67, E. A. Speiser provided two different transliterations and translations of a key phrase without giving his reasons for the revision. It turns out that the text in question is damaged, rendering one particular cuneiform sign nearly unreadable. The significance of Speiser’s revision for biblical studies is that, depending on which reading is taken, this text provides some legal background either for the concern that a full wife might send away the children of a secondary wife (as in Genesis 21) or for the phenomenon of surrogate motherhood (i. e. the identification of the child of a secondary wife as in some way the child of the full wife; see Genesis 16 and 30). Though some biblical scholars have noted Speiser’s two translations, no one so far has engaged in a technical discussion of the primary text in order to understand the revision. Rather, scholars have sometimes simply chosen the reading that fits better with their purposes (usually Speiser’s earlier reading). This article examines the original cuneiform text of HSS V 67 in order to ascertain, using orthographical and linguistic data, which of Speiser’s two readings is the more likely. Speiser’s revised reading proves to be the correct one, meaning that HSS V 67 does not provide a background legal concern that a full wife might send away the sons of a secondary wife (e. g. Genesis 21).

Establishing the correct reading of a hitherto misunderstood inscription, (re-)published in A. George, Mesopotamian Incantations and Related Texts in the Schøyen Collection (CUSAS 32; Bethesda 2016). The carnelian gemstone bearing the... more

Establishing the correct reading of a hitherto misunderstood inscription, (re-)published in A. George, Mesopotamian Incantations and Related Texts in the Schøyen Collection (CUSAS 32; Bethesda 2016). The carnelian gemstone bearing the text turns out to have functioned as an amulet to prevent a curse from materializing.

Texts derived from excavations at Sātu Qaḽā, the Assyrian Idu, in Iraqi Kurdistan, attest to a local kingdom preceding the rise of the Neo-Assyrian Empire. Though the fragmentary and formulaic inscriptions so far provide some of the best... more

Texts derived from excavations at Sātu Qaḽā, the Assyrian Idu, in Iraqi Kurdistan, attest to a local kingdom preceding the rise of the Neo-Assyrian Empire. Though the fragmentary and formulaic inscriptions so far provide some of the best evidence for the transition from the Late Bronze to the Early Iron Age in the Eastern Tigris, their precise dating and thus their relevance to the transition is partly based on internal criteria. The following article will review the palaeography and language of the inscriptions as both criteria for dating and as a reflection of the role of institutional predecessors in shaping the transition at the site. (All publication and film rights signed away to the Austrian Academy of Sciences, but .pdf gladly upon request)

Published in Afghan Studies (1982) Volumes 3&4, pages 81-87

Materials 1 These materials contain iconographical and textual evidence shedding light on religion, religious thought, and the relationship between man and god in the ancient Near East. They are neither meant to be exhaustive nor to be... more

Materials 1 These materials contain iconographical and textual evidence shedding light on religion, religious thought, and the relationship between man and god in the ancient Near East. They are neither meant to be exhaustive nor to be touching every aspect of the topic at hand. The artefacts assembled herein focus primarily on objects in the Yale Babylonian Collection, which houses around 37,000 artefacts inscribed with cuneiform script in addition to several thousand more objects from Mesopotamia. They date from the 4 th millennium BC until the 1 st cent. AD.

The paper presents a new corpus of an ancient language—Hittite, a dead cuneiform language of Anatolian family attested on clay tablets of 18–12 cc. BC. Hittite syntax proves to be more and more interesting for the researchers, so the need... more

The paper presents a new corpus of an ancient language—Hittite, a dead cuneiform language of Anatolian family attested on clay tablets of 18–12 cc. BC. Hittite syntax proves to be more and more interesting for the researchers, so the need of an online annotated corpus for this language is more and more compelling. There are several major problems of building an annotated corpus for a dead cuneiform language. All texts have lacunae in almost every sentence, therefore, it is rather difficult to apply standard methods of parsing and syntactic annotation. The main problem concerns marking up syntax in broken parts. Most treebanks are based on morpho- syntactic annotation performed at the level of a word form. But having half of a sentence lost, we can hardly build a tree out of broken fragments. Instead, we suggest annotation of a whole clause. The paper discusses the principles of syntactic annotation of broken parts and the basic structure of a new syntactically annotated Hittite corpus (available at http://hittitecorpus.ru), the on-going project of the Department of Anatolian and Celtic Studies at the Institute of linguistics, Russian Academy of Sciences.

In this paper we present a new method for automatic transliteration and segmentation of Unicode cuneiform glyphs using Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques. Cuneiform is one of the earliest known writing system in the world, which... more

In this paper we present a new method for automatic transliteration and segmentation of Unicode cuneiform glyphs using Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques. Cuneiform is one of the earliest known writing system in the world, which documents millennia of human civilizations in the ancient Near East. Hundreds of thousands of cuneiform texts were found in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries CE, most of which are written in Akkadian. However, there are still tens of thousands of texts to be published. We use models based on machine learning algorithms such as recurrent neural networks (RNN) with an accuracy reaching up to 97% for automatically transliterating and segmenting standard Unicode cuneiform glyphs into words. Therefore, our method and results form a major step towards creating a human-machine interface for creating digitized editions. Our code, Akkademia, is made publicly available for use via a web application, a python package, and a Github repository.

This is a double research paper: (1) Tipology and evolution of the musical forms across the three 13th-century notated MSS. of the Cantigas de Santa Maria: the first systematic revision of the subject since Anglés (1958) [a few mistakes... more

This is a double research paper: (1) Tipology and evolution of the musical forms across the three 13th-century notated MSS. of the Cantigas de Santa Maria: the first systematic revision of the subject since Anglés (1958) [a few mistakes crept in and were corrected in the same author's paper "Jograis, contrafacta, formas musicais: cultura urbana nas Cantigas de Santa Maria", in Alcanate. Revista de Estudios Alfonsíes, nº 8 (2012-2013), pp. 43-53, where the table of musical forms was expanded from codex T to the whole collection]. (2) The notation of codex T.j.1: the first systematic analysis of the Escorial type of notation, with the differences between codices E and T outlined in detail.

The Assyrian bas-relief in the Gulbenkian ́s Museum is one of its ex-libris. That is one of the 200 bas-relief that covered the walls of Aššurnasirpal II palace in Nimrud. He was King of Assyria in the 9th century BC. This bas-relief like... more

The Assyrian bas-relief in the Gulbenkian ́s Museum is one of its ex-libris. That is one of the 200 bas-relief that covered the walls of Aššurnasirpal II palace in Nimrud. He was King of Assyria in the 9th century BC. This bas-relief like most of those covering the palace walls, displays a cuneiform inscription called The Standard Inscription of Aššurnasirpal II. This paper presents a direct translation from the Gulbenkian’s bas-relief. We include the cuneiform transcription and transliteration as well as English and Portuguese translations. This is not a critical edition, but we compared with other editions of the Standard Inscription. mind other editions.

A brief sketch of the cuneiform script for a Russian linguistic encyclopaedic series. In Russian.

Several interesting facts emerge when one places the information contained in the Anabasis side by side with that provided by the contemporary cuneiform texts on the Middle-Euphrates and northern Babylonia. The route taken by Cyrus the... more

Several interesting facts emerge when one places the information contained in the Anabasis side by side with that provided by the contemporary cuneiform texts on the Middle-Euphrates and northern Babylonia. The route taken by Cyrus the Younger along the left bank of the Euphrates is revealed as unconventional. The choice of this itinerary was dictated both by the strategy he was following vis-à-vis his brother, as well as by his troops. The countryside crossed by the Ten Thousand in northern Babylonia helps to define more precisely and fully what the cuneiform sources suggest : it is primarily an agricultural region, where rural settlement at the expense of the traditional Babylonian cities was favoured under the Achaemenids. The same phenomenon can be observed in the former region of Assyria when the soldiers move up the Tigris. The accuracy of Xenophon's observations on the desert fauna and Babylonian flora needs to be stressed, despite the fact that his interpretation of various features of the landscape are somewhat contrived. This may be either bis own doing or that of his characters.