Cuneiform Commentaries Project - Updates

From Enrique Jiménez [enrique.jimenez@yale.edu]:

Cuneiform Commentaries Project - Updates 

A few months after the official release of the Cuneiform Commentaries Project (http://ccp.yale.edu) in March 2015, we are happy to announce that CCP now includes over one hundred edited commentaries.

Whereas this amounts to just 12% of all known commentaries, it contains a flood of new information. To mention a few examples, the newly edited texts include new verbs (http://ccp.yale.edu/4.1.23 ll. 1-2), and previously unrecognized quotations from Ludlul (http://ccp.yale.edu/3.5.u7 l. 4), Enūma eliš (http://ccp.yale.edu/3.1.u35), and the god list An = Anu (http://ccp.yale.edu/3.1.u45).

Many of the newly edited commentaries were previously unpublished. Commentaries edited for the first time include, for instance, a commentary on the medical series Sagig from the “Sippar Collection” (http://ccp.yale.edu/4.1.18), an important cultic commentary (http://ccp.yale.edu/7.2.u103, edited by U. Gabbay, I. Finkel, and E. Jiménez), a commentary on physiognomic omens, with astrological concerns (http://ccp.yale.edu/3.7.2.K), and the only known commentary on a Namburbi ritual (http://ccp.yale.edu/2.3).

Several of the previously unpublished commentaries were also previously unidentified. The newly identified fragments of commentaries include commentaries on the divinatory series Šumma Ālu (http://ccp.yale.edu/3.5.1.B and http://ccp.yale.edu/3.5.6) and Bārûtu (http://ccp.yale.edu/3.4.1.I and http://ccp.yale.edu/3.4.2.E).

Several bugs and oddities of the website have been fixed during the past few months. In addition, the following changes have been introduced:

– Previously the individual records were accessible only by using the CDLI number as the URL path, e.g. http://ccp.yale.edu/P270807 – now it is also possible to access them using the CCP number as the path, e.g. http://ccp.yale.edu/4.1.23
– We have created a Newsletter, which will alert recipients of new additions to the corpus once or twice a month. Users can sign up for it at http://ccp.yale.edu/newsletter
– We have continued to upload photos of tablets. Currently the photographic archive of CCP comprises 2,750 photographs, most of them taken for the project
– Newly added functionality: it is now possible to download photographs. Thanks are expressed to Vincent Massaro (Senior Web Engineer, Yale ITS) for implementing this feature
– Added possibility to search commentaries by their rubric
– Added some 300 new bibliographical references
– Added references to transliterations of commentaries in Lambert’s Folios
– Changed the typography of the website to use the font Cardo

Several scholars have offered their generous feedback during the last few months. A special debt of gratitude is owed to U. Gabbay, who has carefully revised dozens of editions and made hundreds of invaluable suggestions. I.L. Finkel has also provided collations and suggestions for many passages. E. Robson generously shared the raw ATF files of some fifty commentaries mainly from Uruk that were edited for the portal “The Geography of Knowledge in Assyria and Babylonia” by M.-F. Besnier, Ph. Clancier, and herself. These editions are being revised, adapted and uploaded to CCP. Fifteen of them are already available, at http://ccp.yale.edu/catalogue?copy=GKAB&edition=2 N. Veldhuis has continued to assist in the preparation of the electronic editions. In addition, M. Frazer, U. Koch, and J.A. Sowers have actively cooperated with CCP.

Scholars working on commentaries are encouraged to contribute their suggestions and corrections using the forms found on the website (please find a set of instructions at http://ccp.yale.edu/home/how-use). We would also like to invite again Assyriologists around the world to contribute their editions of as yet unedited commentary tablets, for which they will receive full credit.