Well, I have not posted on this blog for some time, and I fear that my organization and writing here will lack some of the precision that I prefer. However, I know that I will not keep this blog updated if I require a high level of style and readability in each post. So... please bear with me.
I am only a few weeks away from leaving, and everything seems to be in place. I have arranged for a place to stay in Tübingen, and all of my paperwork is complete. All that is left is for me to do is calm my nerves :)
The majority of this summer has been spent trying to work on my dissertation, while simultaneously interacting with my wife and two daughters as much as humanly possible. I feel like a struck a pretty good balance. The workers at Starbucks have become quite familiar with me, as they open early and make coffee available throughout the day :) I have completed a great deal of my research for the remaining chapters of my dissertation; all that remains is the work that I must do with Prof. Volk on the unorthographic Emesal texts.
I suppose I should take a few minutes and talk about what I'm going to be doing for my research project. Unorthographic texts... that does sound a bit esoteric. So, orthography is the way in which words are spelled in a language. If something is orthographic, it follows the normal conventions that a language uses to spell something. For example, if I type the word "dogs," it would be considered to be written with a normal or conventional orthography, because that is how we spell "dogs" in English. However, if I were to spell the word "dogz" (spelling it as it is pronounced, not as it is actually spelled in English [phonetically]), we would say that it is spelled in non-conventional orthography, or unorthographically. In other words, if a word is spelled differently that it is normally spelled, we can call it unorthographic.
Okay... I am working on a group of cuneiform tablets that were written in the middle of the Old Babylonian Period (some time in the 18th century BCE) in Mesopotamia (modern day Iraq). Specifically, these tablets were written in the city of Kish. The excavator of the site, Henri de Genouillac, found ca. 1400 tablets in an area of the site. Many of these tablets contained portions of religious liturgies, or compositions that were used during a liturgical performance.
We know that in later periods (during the 1st millennium BCE) these liturgical texts were used at times when a god might be tempted to leave his temple and not return. For example, let's say that a temple was starting to show signs of deterioration, and the people wanted to tear down a section of the temple and rebuild it. This type of destruction might cause the god to vacate his house, and possibly not return. In order to ensure that the deity would not leave, the priest would perform a liturgy, which described all of the horrific things that would happen to the city should the god decide to abandon it. The composition would plead with the god not to abandon his/her home.
So, the cool thing about the city of Kish is that a large number of these types of liturgies were found there. What makes them even more intriguing is that the tablets from Kish are often written unorthographically. Specifically, they spelled many words phonetically. Remember the example of "dogs" being spelled "dogz?" That's often what they did in these texts. They used different spellings that made the words appear on the tablet as they would have been pronounced. This is most likely because of their use in performance.
Now... the problem. Because the Sumerian words are spelled differently, it is sometimes difficult to determine the words that they are trying to spell. As a native speaker of English, you could probably piece together something like, "Eye am egg rates peeker wen eyed rinks um al kohal furst," but it might take you some time ("I am a great speaker when I drink some alcohol first.") However, we are not native Sumerian speakers, and we are not even certain about how Sumerian was pronounced in some cases. So... the task of deciphering what the priests were intending when they wrote these texts is a bit daunting.
Fortunately, both Prof. Delnero (my wonderful advisor) and Prof. Volk have a great deal of experience working with these unorthographic texts. I too have picked through all of the tablets from Kish, and I have generated a set of rules that seem to apply to the majority of the tablets that contain these phonetic writings. In Germany, I will pour over these tablets again and again, and with Prof. Volk's help, we will hopefully decipher much of the content that we find in these tablets :)
I am only a few weeks away from leaving, and everything seems to be in place. I have arranged for a place to stay in Tübingen, and all of my paperwork is complete. All that is left is for me to do is calm my nerves :)
The majority of this summer has been spent trying to work on my dissertation, while simultaneously interacting with my wife and two daughters as much as humanly possible. I feel like a struck a pretty good balance. The workers at Starbucks have become quite familiar with me, as they open early and make coffee available throughout the day :) I have completed a great deal of my research for the remaining chapters of my dissertation; all that remains is the work that I must do with Prof. Volk on the unorthographic Emesal texts.
I suppose I should take a few minutes and talk about what I'm going to be doing for my research project. Unorthographic texts... that does sound a bit esoteric. So, orthography is the way in which words are spelled in a language. If something is orthographic, it follows the normal conventions that a language uses to spell something. For example, if I type the word "dogs," it would be considered to be written with a normal or conventional orthography, because that is how we spell "dogs" in English. However, if I were to spell the word "dogz" (spelling it as it is pronounced, not as it is actually spelled in English [phonetically]), we would say that it is spelled in non-conventional orthography, or unorthographically. In other words, if a word is spelled differently that it is normally spelled, we can call it unorthographic.
Okay... I am working on a group of cuneiform tablets that were written in the middle of the Old Babylonian Period (some time in the 18th century BCE) in Mesopotamia (modern day Iraq). Specifically, these tablets were written in the city of Kish. The excavator of the site, Henri de Genouillac, found ca. 1400 tablets in an area of the site. Many of these tablets contained portions of religious liturgies, or compositions that were used during a liturgical performance.
We know that in later periods (during the 1st millennium BCE) these liturgical texts were used at times when a god might be tempted to leave his temple and not return. For example, let's say that a temple was starting to show signs of deterioration, and the people wanted to tear down a section of the temple and rebuild it. This type of destruction might cause the god to vacate his house, and possibly not return. In order to ensure that the deity would not leave, the priest would perform a liturgy, which described all of the horrific things that would happen to the city should the god decide to abandon it. The composition would plead with the god not to abandon his/her home.
So, the cool thing about the city of Kish is that a large number of these types of liturgies were found there. What makes them even more intriguing is that the tablets from Kish are often written unorthographically. Specifically, they spelled many words phonetically. Remember the example of "dogs" being spelled "dogz?" That's often what they did in these texts. They used different spellings that made the words appear on the tablet as they would have been pronounced. This is most likely because of their use in performance.
Now... the problem. Because the Sumerian words are spelled differently, it is sometimes difficult to determine the words that they are trying to spell. As a native speaker of English, you could probably piece together something like, "Eye am egg rates peeker wen eyed rinks um al kohal furst," but it might take you some time ("I am a great speaker when I drink some alcohol first.") However, we are not native Sumerian speakers, and we are not even certain about how Sumerian was pronounced in some cases. So... the task of deciphering what the priests were intending when they wrote these texts is a bit daunting.
Fortunately, both Prof. Delnero (my wonderful advisor) and Prof. Volk have a great deal of experience working with these unorthographic texts. I too have picked through all of the tablets from Kish, and I have generated a set of rules that seem to apply to the majority of the tablets that contain these phonetic writings. In Germany, I will pour over these tablets again and again, and with Prof. Volk's help, we will hopefully decipher much of the content that we find in these tablets :)
