On behalf of CDLI, I would like to announce the completion of a
project to correct and standardize transliterations, and to add
English translations to the CDLI entries of the royal/monumental and
votive inscriptions of the ED IIIb (Presargonic) period. The total of
843 known text artifacts from this period contain slightly more than
400 compositions, including the published inscriptions found in
Douglas Frayne, RIME Early Periods 1, and in Horst Steible, FAOS 5,
together with other transliterated texts that escaped inclusion in
those volumes for one reason or another. Duplicate exemplars of a
composite text—RIME 1.9.3.9, for example, is found on 40 discrete
objects—are, where no image documentation is available,
transliterated in full reconstructed form, but as a rule only the
entry associated with the first witness is translated. This entry is
generally the most fully preserved, and most often cited version of a
particular inscription. The translations on the whole employ
non-controversial standard vocabulary and are fairly literal, designed
to render Sumerian lemmas and grammatical information line by line,
with as little distortion of English syntax as possible. A good
example of one artifact with catalogue, images, transliteration and
translation, is found at <http://www.cdli.ucla.edu/P222479> (this is
one of nine such nail inscriptions from Enanatum); all translated ED
IIIb royal inscriptions may be viewed at <http://tinyurl.com/3f8w6rq>,
while all objects at <http://tinyurl.com/3oab4an>.
New exemplars of such inscriptions are slowly emerging from long-held,
but still unpublished collections as well as from post-Kuwait War
acquisitions. These texts, usually cones or nails with known
inscriptions, are being added to CDLI as they appear, and, consistent
with the cataloguing guidelines of the Oracc sub-project ETCSRI
(<http://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/etcsri/>), are being assigned
artificial RIME numbers to ensure their easy searchability. For
instance, the Enmetena cone inscription RIME 1.9.5.3 was identified on
five objects subsequent to the completion of the Toronto volume with
its 39 witnesses; these objects, from the Harvard Art Museum / Arthur
M. Sackler Museum, from two private collections in the United States,
and from the Oslo Schøyen Collection, are now designated RIME
1.09.05.03, ex. add40 - add44 in the CDLI catalogue
Daniel A Foxvog
Date:
2011-08-09