The Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature. Revised edition.

Abstract

This edition of the ETCSL is an expansion, revision and enhancement of the first-time deposit of the corpus ( - currently not available). The Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature (ETCSL) comprises transliterations and English translations of 394 compositions attested on sources dating to the period from approximately 2100 to 1700 BCE. The compositions are divided into seven categories: ancient literary catalogues; narrative compositions; royal praise poetry and hymns to deities on behalf of rulers; literary letters and letter-prayers; divine and temple hymns; proverbs and proverb collections; and a more general category including compositions such as debates, dialogues and riddles. The numbering of the compositions within the corpus follows Miguel Civil's unpublished catalogue of Sumerian literature (etcslfullcat.html).Files with an initial c are composite transliterations (a reconstructed text editorially assembled from the extant exemplars but including substantive variants) in which the cuneiform signs are represented in the Roman alphabet. Files with an initial t are translations. The composite files include full references for the cuneiform sources and author-date references for the secondary sources (detailed in bibliography.xml). The composite and translation files are in XML and have been annotated according to the TEI guidelines. In terms of linguistic information, each word form in the composite transliterations has been assigned to a lexeme which is specified by a citation form, word class information and basic English translation.