http://www.albertmartin.de/latein/

Tags: toolsof the trade

Die Welt des Orients http://www.v-r.de/de/zeitschriften/500045/?sn=o5ojkpmo29cjc3cntm9rem4t94

To be continued …

“The SBL Handbook of Style is precisely what is needed for the next generation or two or three of scholars in our field and for everybody in the chain from author to editor to printer, including all the half steps in between. I hope that The Handbook will draw together everybody who publishes in this field to agree to adopt it as the bible for publishing scholarly works in our discipline. having a uniform standard, and a detailed exposition of the rules and the whys and the wherefores of this intricate business, will go a long way toward clarifying and simplifying the work of both writer and reader of these erudite products. I could not be more enthusiastic about a volume that I can recommend to one and all, and to which I can send innocent, ignorant, and recalcitrant authors and editors, and all the rest.” ? David Noel Freedman, Professor of History, and Chair in Hebrew Biblical Studies, University of California, San Diego

“The SBL Handbook of Style is an astonishing book, a true ?one-stop? reference for authors preparing manuscripts in biblical studies and related fields. It covers an amazing range of topics, from what every literate scholar should know (but may not) to what only the most erudite expert in an obscure subfield of the discipline would be likely to know. Do you need to know how to cite an Internet publication? Whose job it is to prepare the index and secure permissions? How to alphabetize Abraham ibn Ezra (and why)? What the abbreviation of AAeg stands for? It’s all here. This volume should substantially reduce the incidence of tears and tantrums that so often beset the process of manuscript preparation. Before long biblical scholars will wonder how we ever got along without this indispensable reference work. Every graduate program should make The SBL Handbook of Style a required text.” ? Carol A. Newsom, Professor of Old Testament, Emory University

SBL Handbook of Style
Patrick H. Alexander, Kutsko, Ernest, Decker-Lucke
ISBN156563487X
Price: $24.95

Publication Date: April, 2003

Available at the SBL Website.

About the CDLI online sign list

The Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (CDLI) sees as one of its major goals the implementation of an online sign list for the early phases of cuneiform, ca. 3300-2000 B.C. This represents a period of often rapid development in both the graphic form, and the semantic or phonetic referents of individual signs of the cuneiform repertory that has, due to a number of reasons, not been well documented in the published Assyriological literature. D. O. Edzard’s article “Keilschrift” in Reallexikon der Assyriololgie vol. 5 (1976-1980) pp. 544-568 presents the currently most comprehensive overview of early cuneiform development, and includes pp. 557-558 a list of published photographs of 4th and 3rd millennium cuneiform tablets recommended by the author in any attempt to clarify graphic sign development of that period of writing.

Copies are offered of the major sign list publications for the various historical phases of early Babylonia as these are understood in the general Assyriological literature.

Currently available relevant publications:

Late Uruk period (Uruk IV-III), ca. 3300-3000 B.C.

• A. Falkenstein, Archaische Texte aus Uruk ( Archaische Texte aus Uruk 1; Berlin-Leipzig 1936)
• M. Green/H. J. Nissen, Zeichenliste der Archaischen Texte aus Uruk (ATU 2; Berlin 1987)
• R. K. Englund/H. J. Nissen, Die lexikalischen Listen der archaischen Texte aus Uruk (ATU 3; Berlin 1992)
• R. K. Englund/J.-P. Grégoire, The Proto-Cuneiform Texts from Jemdet Nasr (Materialien zu den frühen Schriftzeugnissen des Vorderen Orients 1; Berlin 1991)

Proto-Elamite period, ca. 3100-2900 B.C.

• P. Meriggi, La scrittura proto-elamica. Parte IIa: Catalogo dei segni (Rome 1974)

Early Dynastic I period, ca. 2800-2700 B.C.

• E. Burrows, Archaic Texts (UET 2; London 1935)

Early Dynastic IIIa (Fara) period, ca. 2600-2500 B.C.

• A. Deimel, Liste der archaischen Keilschriftzeichen (WVDOG 40; Berlin 1922)

Early Dynastic IIIb (Old Sumerian, pre-Sargonic Lagash) period, ca. 2500-2340 B.C.

• Y. Rosengarten, Répertoire commenté des signes présargoniques sumériens de Lagash (Paris 1967)

Old Akkadian period, ca. 2340-2200 B.C. (no current sign list available)

Ur III (neo-Sumerian) period, ca. 2120-2000 B.C.

• N. Schneider, Die Keilschriftzeichen der Wirtschaftsurkunden von Ur III … (Rome 1935)

John Heise lists approximately 350 signs on his Website, neatly ordered in searchable lists.

The sign list contains at least three items:

• a number from Borger’s book: Babylonisch-assyrische Zeichenliste
• the cuneiform sign in New Assyrian orthography
• the name of the sign or one of its values.

Index of Cuneiform Pages>>

ETCSL signlist

Sign name: KU Values: bid3, bu7, dab5, dib2, dur2, duru2, durun, gu5, ku, nu10, su?5, še10, tukul, tuš, ugu4

The basis for this list is the transliterations in the ETCSL (including proper nouns, but excluding numerals), and it only contains signs and values found in the ETCSL. In some cases the sample form given for a sign predates the corpus, highlighting differences between signs which can be less clear-cut in the period of the corpus.

To the ETCSL Signlist >>

The Pennsylvania Sumerian Dictionary

The PSD is preparing an exhaustive dictionary of the Sumerian language which aims to be useful to non-specialists as well as Sumerologists. In addition, they are developing tools and datasets for working with the Sumerian language and its text-corpora. All materials will be made freely available on the website.

The Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature is based at the University of Oxford. Its aim is to make accessible, via the World Wide Web, over 400 literary works composed in the Sumerian language in ancient Mesopotamia during the late third and early second millennia BC.

At this site you will find a catalogue of these works, together with a Sumerian text, English prose translation and bibliographical information for each composition. New material and new user facilities are added to the site regularly.

ETCSL Home, ETCSL How-To, ETCSL Complete Catalogue

The Agade List is a source of news run by Jack Sasson on a regular listserver. It covers the whole ANE.

To subscribe send a blank email to listserv@unc.edu, and write (as subject and in first line): subscribe agade

• “Tools of the Trade” is a collection of basic tools for the ANE scholar.
• I collect them all in this one place so as to have them ready-to-hand (as Heidegger would have it). I hope other students will find use for them.

• Keeping my tools sharpened is (one of) my way(s) to avoid or overcome writer’s block – that dull feeling in the head, that leaden feeling in the brain. Go back to the sources – learn some more cuneiform signs, study new vocabulary, make some grammar exercises, read a text real close – your basic mental warming up. Studying a sweet hard piece of grammar usually makes the head crystal-clear, shining & sparkling new.
• “Tools of the Trade” includes online dictionaries of Sumerian, Akkadian and Hebrew; A list of Journals, Periodicals, Major Reference Works, and Series; ecstatic rantings about the SBL Handbook of Style and all matters relating to SNOOTiness & Pedantry; Online Sign Lists and Text Collections; and so on – it is very much a work in progress.

Some more tips to keep mentally fit:

• Your basic sweaty work out: use the SQ3R-Method to analyse a Mickey Mouse album. Going back to the roots and spark new ideas: review and organise source material. Formulate and answer the really silly questions that keep bugging you: Where do I find a complete list of Sumerian signs? When was the Bronze Age in Mesopotamia? Can the Bible be considered a historical source? Is it politically correct to write “God” with a capital?
• Keep a writing-&-working-diary. Going over the work already done, re-reading about earlier enthusiasms and discoveries, maybe finding new connections to what you are doing today, or noting that you already had the problem of today before, in another context – it all helps to keep mentally fit and passionate.
• “State of the Arts”: Where do I stand methodologically, theoretically, and knowledge-wise? I am a pro-feminist, mostly heterosexual woman. Do I need to bother with Feminist Theory and Gender Studies? Can I find some more basic sources? Am I up-to-date with current state of research, and if not, where am I going to find the latest books and articles on my theme? Can I formulate exactly the problem I’m researching? Why am I doing this?

If there creeps in the last question a maudling note of desperation and self-pity, try the following:

• Work, study and improve your eccentricity characteristics. According to Dr. David Weeks eccentrics are very, very creative. They have extreme degrees of curiosity, and they’re very independent-minded. Their other motivation is fairly idealistic. They want to make the world a better place, and they want to make other people happy. They have these happy obsessive preoccupations, and a wonderful, unusual sense of humor, and this gives them a significant meaning in life. And they are far healthier than most people because of that. They have very low stress. They’re not worried about conforming to the rest of society. Eccentrics use their solitude very constructively. Low stress, high happiness equates with psychological and physical health.