The Cuneiform Copy Class
Nov 13, 2014 10:56:35 GMT -5
Post by us4-he2-gal2 on Nov 13, 2014 10:56:35 GMT -5
Thread Orientation: In the following thread a class for copying cuneiform text given at the Friedrich-Schiller university in Jena will be discussed.
The skill of scholars in copying cuneiform texts by hand and producing legible and scientifically accurate "line drawings" or "line art" of original cuneiform tablets has sustained the field of Assyriology/Sumerology for over 100 years. (If anyone is unsure what line art might look like, see an excellent example here. Line art or line drawings are simply terms which refer to a hand drawing of a cuneiform tablet and its contents.) The tradition of copying tablets by hand has allowed scholars to share and distribute the contents of cuneiform texts in published books and, for most of the history of the field, these drawings have been the only way to view and analyze cuneiform texts (short of boarding a plane and flying to Berlin, London, Paris etc. or where ever the tablet is housed). Beyond this, it is also true that from the moment they leave the ground, cuneiform texts begin a slow process of disintegration. And so line drawings have been the traditionally way of preserving this ancient information.
In arriving in Jena I was therefore quite pleased to be able to participate in a cuneiform copy class. In Toronto there are no cuneiform tablets available for this kind of practice, but in Jena there is the Frau Professor Hilprecht collection of some 2500-3000 tablets or so (see the Jena thread.) In Germany they sometimes have what are called "block-seminars" meaning, instead of a full semester of classes, a course can be squeezed into one week (4 days of 6 hour classes). And this course was a block seminar style like this.
So there was a bit of the clash of ages during day one of the copy course. The day started with a tour of the computers and the scanner that are being used to scan the Hilprecht cuneiform tablet collection at the institute. The scans are of course being made available on CDLI. While this was interesting, the day was really about the old way of preserving the information on cuneiform texts. We were each lead into the room that houses the tablets and asked to select one to copy. I choose this little ED tablet because es war passend für ein Anfanger 'suitable for a beginner.' In time, the tablets were then delivered to the desks by the Professor. We were permitted to handle the tablet wearing a white glove (or a shoe for the hand as a German might say). It was amazing to finally come into contact with a cuneiform tablet after 5 years in the university. I was constantly aware that the tablet in front of me was over 4,000 years old - throughout the next 4 days I would check the hairline crack that existed in the middle of the tablet and worry about whether it had gotten bigger
How does one go about copying a text then? Well, there weren't too many instructions other than to be careful and take measurements. Pictured here is a friend I made, Till. He came particularly well prepared and you can see on his left is a page of measurements and calculations. Basically, you are just drawing the thing by eye and trying to be as accurate as possible - but we also endeavored to draw at 2X scale or more, so that the signs would be more legible. So you must do some math to pull that off.
So really, it was a matter of rolling up the sleeves and getting the hands dirty so to speak. Or a "trial by fire" a phrase which keep occurring to me that day. For me, there was also a challenge in working with an Early Dynastic era text. When you copy a cuneiform tablet you must first read the text, then make a transliteration of the signs and finaly, translate the text. This is now standard practice. And so this was the first time I had to read an ED tablet and that was difficult. Once I moved to the copying stage, pictured above, I had some initial problems with the signs , partially due to a dull pencil! 0_0
In time, I made a reasonable drawing of the thing. It was exhausting to spend all day trying to be as exact as possible and this little drawing took pretty well the entire 4 day course (that and the reading / translating of the signs).
Here is the tablet and copy done by another student in the class who achieved an amazing result. Interestingly, there was a wide spectrum of results from students, some having issues making a fairly simply copy others found it easy to copy large complicated texts. Since this was everyone's first time copying a text, I suspect that the differences may derive in large part to ones level of artistic skill, more than anything else. I was reasonably satisfied with my copy but I am glad I wasn't taking this course for credit when what seems to differentiate results (i.e. marks) is something you can't really control (i.e. artistic skill.) Some students did take the course for credit.
One student challenged themselves to copy the tiny cuneiform signs on this clay prism - a five sided clay form with text on each side, you see the occasional inscribed prism in Mesopotamia. A fantastic piece literary history, but perhaps an unusual choice for your first copying project
Here is an example of something I was particularly in awe about on this occasion, yes modern hand-writing. Prof. Krebernik explained that in the Hilprecht collection, in the little cases that contain the cuneiform tablets, often you find these little hand written notes that were left by visiting scholars, such as von Soden, or S.N. Kramer and so forth. And so I ended up photographing the notes as often as the texts themselves.
Toward the end of the course Prof. Krebernik decided to showcase a few of the treasures housed in the collection. One of the highlights was this particular piece of clay, which is indeed a famous piece of clay as it contains an ancient map of the city of Nippur on it. I am grateful for the institute and to Krebernik for allowing me to sit in on this course and at no cost.
Cuneiform Tablet Copying
The skill of scholars in copying cuneiform texts by hand and producing legible and scientifically accurate "line drawings" or "line art" of original cuneiform tablets has sustained the field of Assyriology/Sumerology for over 100 years. (If anyone is unsure what line art might look like, see an excellent example here. Line art or line drawings are simply terms which refer to a hand drawing of a cuneiform tablet and its contents.) The tradition of copying tablets by hand has allowed scholars to share and distribute the contents of cuneiform texts in published books and, for most of the history of the field, these drawings have been the only way to view and analyze cuneiform texts (short of boarding a plane and flying to Berlin, London, Paris etc. or where ever the tablet is housed). Beyond this, it is also true that from the moment they leave the ground, cuneiform texts begin a slow process of disintegration. And so line drawings have been the traditionally way of preserving this ancient information.
In arriving in Jena I was therefore quite pleased to be able to participate in a cuneiform copy class. In Toronto there are no cuneiform tablets available for this kind of practice, but in Jena there is the Frau Professor Hilprecht collection of some 2500-3000 tablets or so (see the Jena thread.) In Germany they sometimes have what are called "block-seminars" meaning, instead of a full semester of classes, a course can be squeezed into one week (4 days of 6 hour classes). And this course was a block seminar style like this.
So there was a bit of the clash of ages during day one of the copy course. The day started with a tour of the computers and the scanner that are being used to scan the Hilprecht cuneiform tablet collection at the institute. The scans are of course being made available on CDLI. While this was interesting, the day was really about the old way of preserving the information on cuneiform texts. We were each lead into the room that houses the tablets and asked to select one to copy. I choose this little ED tablet because es war passend für ein Anfanger 'suitable for a beginner.' In time, the tablets were then delivered to the desks by the Professor. We were permitted to handle the tablet wearing a white glove (or a shoe for the hand as a German might say). It was amazing to finally come into contact with a cuneiform tablet after 5 years in the university. I was constantly aware that the tablet in front of me was over 4,000 years old - throughout the next 4 days I would check the hairline crack that existed in the middle of the tablet and worry about whether it had gotten bigger
How does one go about copying a text then? Well, there weren't too many instructions other than to be careful and take measurements. Pictured here is a friend I made, Till. He came particularly well prepared and you can see on his left is a page of measurements and calculations. Basically, you are just drawing the thing by eye and trying to be as accurate as possible - but we also endeavored to draw at 2X scale or more, so that the signs would be more legible. So you must do some math to pull that off.
So really, it was a matter of rolling up the sleeves and getting the hands dirty so to speak. Or a "trial by fire" a phrase which keep occurring to me that day. For me, there was also a challenge in working with an Early Dynastic era text. When you copy a cuneiform tablet you must first read the text, then make a transliteration of the signs and finaly, translate the text. This is now standard practice. And so this was the first time I had to read an ED tablet and that was difficult. Once I moved to the copying stage, pictured above, I had some initial problems with the signs , partially due to a dull pencil! 0_0
In time, I made a reasonable drawing of the thing. It was exhausting to spend all day trying to be as exact as possible and this little drawing took pretty well the entire 4 day course (that and the reading / translating of the signs).
Here is the tablet and copy done by another student in the class who achieved an amazing result. Interestingly, there was a wide spectrum of results from students, some having issues making a fairly simply copy others found it easy to copy large complicated texts. Since this was everyone's first time copying a text, I suspect that the differences may derive in large part to ones level of artistic skill, more than anything else. I was reasonably satisfied with my copy but I am glad I wasn't taking this course for credit when what seems to differentiate results (i.e. marks) is something you can't really control (i.e. artistic skill.) Some students did take the course for credit.
One student challenged themselves to copy the tiny cuneiform signs on this clay prism - a five sided clay form with text on each side, you see the occasional inscribed prism in Mesopotamia. A fantastic piece literary history, but perhaps an unusual choice for your first copying project
Here is an example of something I was particularly in awe about on this occasion, yes modern hand-writing. Prof. Krebernik explained that in the Hilprecht collection, in the little cases that contain the cuneiform tablets, often you find these little hand written notes that were left by visiting scholars, such as von Soden, or S.N. Kramer and so forth. And so I ended up photographing the notes as often as the texts themselves.
Toward the end of the course Prof. Krebernik decided to showcase a few of the treasures housed in the collection. One of the highlights was this particular piece of clay, which is indeed a famous piece of clay as it contains an ancient map of the city of Nippur on it. I am grateful for the institute and to Krebernik for allowing me to sit in on this course and at no cost.