Cuneiform

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.

ISBN 978-619-176-205-7

This monograph is on the topic of my successfully defended PhD dissertation. The book examines the royal authority and ideology in the early Neo-Assyrian Empire (934–745 B.C.). Its aims can be summarized as follows:
1. Study of the reign of each Assyrian king of the period, his military and political actions, including the dynamics of contacts with the countries of the region, the goals pursued by him; and – for whom applicable – the relevant internal affairs and building activities.
2. Study of the Assyrian royal ideology in the context of certain motives, beliefs, and suggestions attested in the sources. 
3. Concluding observations on and synthesis of the exercise of authority, which led to the historical processes and political contacts in combination with the motives, beliefs, and suggestions of the Assyrian royal ideology.

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 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 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 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 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)

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 following PowerPoint presentation (slides) contains information that was used as part of an online "Text-in-Translation Reading Group" (Seminar) led by Dylan Lawrence Gibson and hosted by Save Ancient Studies Alliance (SASA). It was funded by a grant from the Society for Classical Studies (Ancient Worlds, Modern Communities).

This was the first session from a series of 3 dedicated to discussing Ancient Near-Eastern music 'theory' cuneiform tablets:

Full Series Title: "An Introduction to Ancient Near-Eastern Music ‘Theory’: Understanding Musical Inscriptions"

Session 1 Title: "UET VII 126: String Names and Order of an Unknown Instrument"

This is ideal for students interested in the field of Archaeo-Musicology.

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 https://hittitecorpus.ru), the on-going project of the Department of Anatolian and Celtic Studies at the Institute of linguistics, Russian Academy of Sciences.

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 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.

Introductory course (40 hours) of cuneiform epigraphy and Sumerian language. Lectures (20 hours), reading of cuneiform texts (14 hours), cuneiform labs (6 hours).

En este seminario los alumnos aprenderán a trabajar con materiales cuneiformes a partir del objeto arqueológico hasta su publicación, con particular enfoque en los textos de la tradición en lengua sumeria del tercer milenio a.n.e. Objetivos del seminario serán el conocimiento introductorio de la epigrafía cuneiforme y de la lengua sumeria, y el desarrollo de la conciencia de la materialidad de los textos cuneiformes.

Clases magistrales: presentación de los conocimientos que los alumnos deben adquirir (20 horas, 10 sesiones).
Clases prácticas: ejercicios de epigrafía cuneiforme y gramática sumeria, lectura de textos cuneiformes a partir de reproducciones fotográficas y autografías (copias) (14 horas, 7 sesiones).
Talleres de técnica de escritura cuneiforme: copia de textos cuneiformes y reproducción de tablillas en arcilla (6 horas, 3 sesiones).

The aim of this contribution is to determine to what extent it is possible to compare cuneiform to Chinese writing and its adaptations. Comparative linguistics, concerning the respective languages, will be also taken into consideration. In order to accomplish this, we will comment on some of the most important reference works in the specialized literature,
analyzing their results sub specie modernitatis. Alternative approaches and new lines of investigation will be eventually sought. Moreover, we will examine briefly the concept of writing, as a tool for the (re-)construction of cultural identity in a parochial rhetoric discourse.

El propósito de este ensayo es intentar comprender hasta qué punto es posible una aproximación comparativa entre la escritura cuneiforme y la escritura china (y sus adaptaciones), sin perder el contacto con la comparación de los idiomas relativos a ellas. Para ello, se comentarán algunos de los trabajos fundamentales de la literatura especializada, analizando los resultados sub specie modernitatis y buscando alternativas y nuevas líneas de investigación. Asimismo, se revisará brevemente el concepto mismo de escritura, en calidad de herramienta para una (re-)construcción de la identidad cultural dentro de un discurso retórico localista.

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.