Akkadian Incantations on the Web: S.E.A.L.

[us4-he2-gal2]

S.E.A.L.

With this thread I would like to draw attention to the further development of the S.E.A.L. (Sources of Early Akkadian Literature) web project from the University of Leipzig and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.


While this project has been mentioned at various times at enenuru, it is now clear that the incantation sections have been significantly developed. Ever since ETCSL demonstrated what an electronic database can do for the accessibility and spread of Sumerian literature, I have hoped and hoped for a database of incantations - hence, all those similarly intrigued by Mesopotamian incantation literature owe SEAL workers a big debt of gratitude for this recent work!

www.seal.uni-leipzig.de/index.html

To navigate to this fast developing incantation database, simply follow the above link, click the "corpus" link on the left, and click section 5.0 incantations. So thanks very much to Nathan Wasserman, P. Streck, and Elyze Zomer for the development of section 5.0 Incantations of the SEAL database.
This resource is particular great for enenuru readers as we have endeavored to collect what Sumerian incantations we can - SEAL now very effectively supplies something that has been lacking: namely, the Akkadian incantations.


Section 5.0 Old Akkadian incantations represents a fascinating array of early texts and on looking over the current list it appears to include both the Early Dynastic texts in Akkadian (originally treated by Krebernik) and at least as many Sargonic incantations as Cunningham had listed - I will need to review this area and possibly update our Sargonic incantations thread here at enenuru.


Section 5.1 Old Babylonian incantations in Akkadian.
In 1996 Cunningham was able to list 230 Old Babylonian incantations in SUMERIAN, at present we have not attempted to collect any of these because of the sheer number (but see our Early Dynastic, Sargonic and Ur III incantation threads). Section 5.1. at SEAL treats not the Sumerian but the Akkadian OB incantations, and the team have done well to treat 117 (seeing as Cunningham listed only 97 in 1996). The section really seems well developed with an awesome treatment of most of the incantations listed: photographs, publication history, transliterations and translations, line commentary, index of words! Very nice. Wasserman has done a masterful job here.


Section 5.2 represents a small number of Old Assyrian incantations, I have never seen these before so interesting. Section 5.3 Middle Assyrian and Babylonian incantations, again a corpus I have very little knowledge of - so far, SEAL has just cataloged this section without providing translations. It will be exciting to see what further develops here, with the accomplishments in the previous sections, certainly possible that it will all be translated in time.




Also: Nathan Wasserman has some *very* intriguing work in process as his personal site reports - a forthcoming work entitled ""The Reality of Magic: The World Behind Early Akkadian Incantations." I will be watching closely for that. A the following link, here Wasserman has generously made just about his entire working career available for free download (many article pdfs!).