Death of an Old Assyrian Salesman

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Inferring Social Rank in an Old Assyrian Trade Network

<p>In the early 20th century, the attention of Assyriologists and archaeologists was directed to a number of cuneiform tablets coming from a remote archaeological tell in Kültepe, Turkey. After the first series of excavations, archaeologists discovered a large collection of texts and the remains of a Bronze Age trade colony, referred to in the texts as k¯arum Kaneš. Once these initial ca. 5,000 texts were deciphered, the field of Old Assyrian studies was born. In 1948 official Turkish excavations began at Kültepe and added over 17,000 tablets to the Old Assyrian text corpus, which now totals ca. 23,000 cuneiform tablets [5]. These texts document the intricacies of thriving Bronze Age trade networks, comprised of Old Assyrian merchants from the ancient city of Assur approximately 4,000 years ago (ca. 1950-1750 BCE) [1]. The texts further show how the merchants acted as the middle-men in a large series of inter-connected networks which, among other things, linked the natural resources of tin (in Iran and Afghanistan) and copper (in Turkey) in order to produce bronze in Anatolia.</p> <p>However, one thing the texts do not make clear is the scope and structure of the colonial trade network, in terms of the people involved and their organization. Although the high degree of literacy among the inhabitants of the colony at Kaneš helped create an extremely rich source of texts illustrating the daily life of the people involved, the practice of paponomy (naming a son after his grandfather) has obscured the identities of the merchants for modern scholarship. Thus, due to the density and ambiguity of the names mentioned in these texts, it has been too difficult to gain an understanding of the scope of the colonial society on the basis of the textual record at Kültepe.</p> <p>Our work therefore focuses on jointly inferring the unique individuals as well as their social rank within the Old Assyrian trade network, using a novel probabilistic latent-variable model that exploits partial rank information contained in the texts.</p

Individuality and Identity in Cuneiform: Personalising Writing Practices in the Neo-Sumerian (Ur III) and Old Assyrian Periods

Writing is a product of the hand as much as of the mind; not an innate ability, it is a learned and practised skill, a combination of rules and standards performed by individuals. Inscribed objects, beyond their documentary content, materialise the writing process and the context in which it was performed. This research aims to further our understanding of the material aspects of cuneiform writing beyond its documentary and historical nature, analysing the observable marks left on inscribed tablets by ancient writers. Understanding identity and individuality in cuneiform in terms of sameness and difference, this research investigates how idiosyncrasies and similarities can be formally expressed in writing. Individuality and identity in cuneiform are analysed through the study of two contrasting corpora: the institutionalised production of professional Ur III scribes at the epicentre of state bureaucracy in Mesopotamia in the 21st century BCE, and the practical literacy of Old Assyrian merchants trading between Mesopotamia and Anatolia in the 19th century BCE. Considering the artefactual value of inscribed objects, this research addresses the extent to which palaeographic and material features can vary, conform, or evolve over time, across sites and between groups and individuals. By contrasting datasets, this research interrogates the relationship between inscribed artefacts and writing practices through palaeographic and diplomatic features such as sign variants, writing sequence and text layout. Illustrating the application of a new integrated approach to writing practices to study cuneiform tablets as material objects, this research reaches new layers of information through the study of features such as script density or character forms and formation, thus providing new evidence about standardisation and personalisation of writing practices in the Ur III and Old Assyrian periods. This research was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council under the Collaborative Doctoral Awards scheme (CDA reference: AH/P004539/1)

CyberResearch on the Ancient Near East and Eastern Mediterranean

CyberResearch on the Ancient Near East and Neighboring Regions provides case studies on archaeology, objects, cuneiform texts, and online publishing, digital archiving, and preservation. Eleven chapters present a rich array of material, spanning the fifth through the first millennium BCE, from Anatolia, the Levant, Mesopotamia, and Iran. Customized cyber- and general glossaries support readers who lack either a technical background or familiarity with the ancient cultures. Edited by Vanessa Bigot Juloux, Amy Rebecca Gansell, and Alessandro Di Ludovico, this volume is dedicated to broadening the understanding and accessibility of digital humanities tools, methodologies, and results to Ancient Near Eastern Studies. Ultimately, this book provides a model for introducing cyber-studies to the mainstream of humanities research

Semantic Domains in Akkadian Text

The article examines the possibilities offered by language technology for analyzing semantic fields in Akkadian. The corpus of data for our research group is the existing electronic corpora, Open richly annotated cuneiform corpus (ORACC). In addition to more traditional Assyriological methods, the article explores two language technological methods: Pointwise mutual information (PMI) and Word2vec.Peer reviewe