News from Cuneiform Digital Library Notes (CDLN)

We are pleased to announce the publication of several new contributions to the Cuneiform Digital Library Notes (CDLN):

CDLN 2015:001
Klaus Wagensonner, On an alternative way of capturing RTI images with the camera dome

CDLN 2015:002
Strahil V. Panayotov and Kostadin Kissiov, An administrative tablet from Puzriš-Dagān in Plovdiv, Bulgaria

CDLN 2015:003
Klaus Wagensonner, Turning the Laws of Ur-Namma

We would like to take this opportunity to thank all contributors to CDLN for their support and would like to encourage scholars to contribute to the Notes in future as well.

References and bibliographies:
As of now all bibliographical information is drawn directly from a MySQL database. It is therefore not necessary anymore to send fully formatted bibliographies along with submitted contributions. For all references that are included among the latest available bibliographies on KeiBi Online it is possible to save references and export them into the BibTeX format and send this document along. A full bibliography was added on CDLN, which contains all references used in the various contributions. Clicking on a year leads to the respective contribution(s), where the chosen reference is used. Vice versa, each reference list links back to the full bibliography.

As a test run the “Abbreviations for Assyriology” maintained by CDLI:wiki have been imported into the database as well. By hovering over abbreviations in the bibliographies the full form and additional information is given. Further features such as indices of texts mentioned are in preparation.

We do hope that these changes will increase the efficiency of CDLN and are therefore happy to receive contributions for the next publication of Notes on April 1, 2015.

Submitted contributions are preferably made available as text files or in the RTF format. If the contribution contains tables, word or pages documents may be submitted as well. Please note that in order to aid the editing process, please be so kind to provide all images in separate files and not embedded in the submitted documents.

The CDLN, together with its sister publications Cuneiform Digital Library Bulletin (CDLB) and Cuneiform Digital Library Journal (CDLJ), are peer-reviewed publications that offer a persistent web presence under the auspices of the University of California system. As e-journals, the delay between submission and publication is well below that of academic print journals, while the interaction with cuneiform artifacts documented in the CDLI database offers obvious strengths for an interactive discourse. Authors should expect a two to four month interval between submission of a draft text with illustrations and its publication for substantive contributions to the CDLJ, at most two months for those made to the Bulletin, and approximately two weeks for the Notes that are conceived as an online venue for NABU-style communications that can include short philological or lexicographical contributions as well as regular updates of a more substantial nature describing the background or progress of, in particular, web-based research efforts. For submission guidelines including technicalities regarding bibliographical citations etc. please consult the information at <http://cdli.ucla.edu/?q=about-cdln>.

New submissions will appear in preprint status four times a year (January 1, April 1, July 1, and October 1; notices of new submissions will be made to this list) and are clearly marked as such. During the preprint period, authors will be able to make small, non-substantive changes (e.g., typographical errors) to their submissions. After two weeks, these submissions are then archived.

Scholars are encouraged to send contributions to the CDLN at <klaus.wagensonner@orinst.ox.ac.uk>.

On behalf of the CDLI

Jacob L. Dahl and Klaus Wagensonner
University of Oxford

CDLI News: University of Manchester’s John Rylands Library

From Klaus Wagensonner

The University of Manchester’s John Rylands Library and the CuneiformDigital Library Initiative are pleased to announce the addition of significant new digital content to CDLI’s web offerings.

The John Rylands Library houses remarkable and diverse collections of manuscripts from many periods and cultures.  Among the most important is a substantial collection of cuneiform artefacts; with 1164 pieces, it is the third largest collection of  such material in the UK. The majority of these objects  (1030) are economic records dating to the Ur III period (ca. 2100-2000 BC) giving a representative view of the centralised Babylonian economy at the end of the 3rd millennium BC. Most of these documents have previously been known only from early hand copies or catalogues. The collection contains a smaller number of earlier documents, most notably 23 administrative texts dating to the Old Akkadian period (ca. 2340-2200 BC) and written in a very fine scribal hand.

In addition, the JRL holds a sizeable collection of Old Babylonian letters. Sumerian literature from the same period is represented, among other pieces, by an outstanding manuscript of the composition “Gilgamesh and Aga”; see also the University of Oxford’s online edition. Finally, the collection contains several royal inscriptions from various periods of Mesopotamian history. Most noteworthy are a large cone-shaped inscription of the neo-Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar II (605-562 BC); and a fine example of a
votive inscription by Gudea of the Lagash II dynasty (ca. 2100 BC) inscribed on serpentine.

All texts were imaged by CDLI with conventional photography using High Dynamic Range technology. Some 300 tablets have also been imaged using Reflectance Transformation Imaging (RTI) with the assistance of a photo dome.  For more information on RTI see here.

Thanks to the cooperation and friendly assistance of the Library’s Special Collections staff, the results of the John Rylands Library collaboration have now been added to CDLI pages and are viewable at
<http://cdli.ucla.edu/collections/manchester/manchester.html>.

Any queries concerning the collection should be directed to Elizabeth Gow, Manuscript Curator and Assistant Archivist of the Library; any amendments or comments on the catalogue and associated online files should be directed to CDLI.

The imaging in Manchester and post-capture processing were undertaken by Klaus Wagensonner (University of Oxford) and were made possible by funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. They are part of the
on-going mission of CDLI to ensure the long-term digital preservation of ancient cuneiform inscriptions, and, in furtherance of humanities research, to provide free global access to all available text artefact data.

For the JRL and the CDLI:
Elizabeth Gow, Manuscript Curator and Assistant Archivist,
The John Rylands Library, The University of Manchester
Jacob L. Dahl, University Lecturer in Assyriology and co-PI of the CDLI,
Faculty of Oriental Studies, University  of Oxford

CDLI News: Berlin cuneiform, and a few words concerning CDLI images

From Bob Englund 

Berlin cuneiform, and a few words concerning CDLI images 

I am pleased to pass on to AWOL subscribers notice of the insertion to CDLI of new VAM-Berlin images. Scanned by Ludek Vacin of the Free University, Berlin, with the assistance of Joachim Marzahn, Curator of the VAM cuneiform collection, the raw files were processed to fatcrosses in Los Angeles and are viewable at <http://tinyurl.com/7mxxovd> (including Köcher, BAM [medical texts], Falkenstein, LKU, and van Dijk VS 24 [literary texts], Jakob-Rost, VS 28 [Hittite], and Matouš, LTBA 1 [lexical tests]; Ulrike Steinert kindly assisted me in piecing together the difficult <http://cdli.ucla.edu/P285323> = BAM 3, 237(+?) 238). 

I take this opportunity to offer a few remarks concerning CDLI's policy governing the web dissemination, and the anticipated use of these and other images of physical artifacts in our pages (CDLI use of published line art copies of cuneiform texts was described at <http://cdli.ucla.edu/pubs/cdln/archives/000023.html>). In collaboration with collection managers or owners, CDLI staff generally flatbed scan all available artifacts at a resolution of 600ppi and save image files in 24bit RGB format (<http://cdli.ucla.edu/wiki/doku.php/submission_guidelines>; other standards apply to the scanning of glossy photos or photos in paper publications). The resulting raw scan image files are merged into CDLI "fatcrosses" and further processed to enhance the immediate visual usefulness of the image files. In this processing stage, we generally restrict ourselves to the use of the relatively non-invasive Photoshop tools of levels adjustment (channel: RGB), desaturation (compensating for pixel enhancement occurring in levels adjustments) and "magic wand" and "spot healing brush" to remove, from the black background, remnants of dust and specks that fall from the tablets to the scanner surface, as well as to erase eventual scanner glass scratches visible in background and on uninscribed tablet surfaces. These 600-ppi RGB tif fatcross images are then batched to 300 and 75ppi jpegs, based on an artifact representation of approx. 1:1 at 75ppi on a computer monitor (and thus, at 300ppi, a 4x enlargement of the original artifact). To care for a certain presentation consistency, 75ppi thumbnails of larger artifacts are set at maximally 300x800pixels. Thus CDLI's 600ppi archival tif fatcrosses are not currently distributed through our web server, and permission to receive and use these files must be directed to the respective collections; commercial use of any images of cuneiform artifacts kept in public collections

and made available on CDLI pages is prohibited without the explicit permission from officials of the collections themselves--no such permission can be given by CDLI.

It is obvious to users of CDLI pages that our images are of uneven quality. <http://tinyurl.com/89ghdcm> are three recent VAM examples of what a simple flatbed achieves with willing tablets and an expert scanner. Large accounts with one or both sides rounded, indeed any tablet whose inscribed surfaces are not flat, not to mention irregularly shaped tablets, barrels, and so on, however, may eventually require higher-end imaging (cones appear sufficiently clear directly off the flatbed), as will artifacts with the subtle impressions of cylinder seals. Our policy is to flatbed everything in a collection, and to let images that result from this benign process serve to determine where additional imaging is necessary to achieve a satisfactory digital facsimile. There appears, in the end, to be no real sense in expending substantially more resources to create high-resolution digital facsimiles of cuneiform artifacts than is necessary to satisfy research needs. We are using conventional digital cameras where requested by collection collaborators, and are partnering with imaging specialists at USC in the US (<http://www.usc.edu/dept/LAS/wsrp/information/>), at Oxford and
Southhampton Universities in the UK (<http://www.southampton.ac.uk/archaeology/acrg/AHRC_RTI.html>), and at the University of Leuven in Belgium, in the implementation of Reflectance Transformation Imaging ("dome capture"), to be reserved by CDLI associates for specific artifact targets, in particular for tablets with cylinder seal impressions; and with the MPIWG-Berlin in the use of 3D scanners (Breukmann) in the Jena Hilprecht collection (cp. <http://www.cognitiones.de/doku.php/3d_scans_of_cuneiform_tablets>). But we note that the size of these images currently make their full-resolution viewing online unfeasible, and that, ultimately given the numbers of artifacts in need of digital capture worldwide, imaging should be seen as a tool to achieve dependable and searchable transliterations in the first instance, as the basis for photographically documented paleographies in the second, and, as much as we may be baffled by efforts undertaken to hinder digitization initiatives even in areas of violent conflict, as true and lasting 3D or 3D-like digital facsimiles only in the third.