Using the Corpus of Ancient Mesopotamian Scholarship

This page explains how to browse, sort, and search the Corpus of Ancient Mesopotamian Scholarship (CAMS), and how to use the associated glossaries. Unless otherwise noted, the compositions transliterated and translated for the corpus have been prepared by members of the GKAB project with acknowledgement of primary and secondary sources used. They are released under a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike license.

You may find it helpful to read the Oracc user documentation [http://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/doc/user/] before you start to explore CAMS for the first time. If your browser has problems displaying all the special transliteration characters you may want to download and install Steve Tinney's Ungkam font [http://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/doc/user/fonts/#Ungkam] for Mac, Windows, or Linux.

Browse or search the CAMS corpus

Page View (corpus browser)

The tablets in the corpus are listed by a short, standardised designation, based on their place of publication, and grouped by period, genre, and provenance. The pager also lists the subgenre or standard composition to which the tablet belongs, while the final column gives the library from which it originates.

Browse or search the CAMS corpus

Item View (single tablets or composite texts)

The Item View shows the transliteration and translation of a single tablet or composite text. Place the cursor over any word of the transliteration to see its outline glossary entry, and click on the word to go to its full glossary entry. If the line numbers of the transliteration are shown in blue, you can click them to view an associated tablet or composite text.

The left-hand sidebar gives the following information:

Numbers

CDLI [http://cdli.ucla.edu] catalogue number (external link);
museum number;
excavation number

Views

(there are currently no other views available)

Details

period;
provenance;
genre;
either the subgenre or the standard composition to which the tablet belongs

Bibliography

short references to relevant secondary literature; full references are given on the Bibliography page

Browse or search the CAMS corpus

Searching

You can restrict catalogue (CAT) searches to the following fields, by entering the field name followed by a colon and then what you are searching for, with no space between:

• Designation - e.g., designation:CTN_4,_117
• CDLI catalogue number - e.g., id_text:p363531
• Museum collection - e.g., owner:National_Museum_of_Iraq
• Museum number - e.g., museum_no:IM_67576
• Joins - e.g., join_information:VAT_7828

• Genre - e.g., genre:medical
• One or more words (in sequence) of the subgenre (including composition names), e.g, subgenre:medical_recipe
• Presence of colophon - e.g., text_remarks:colophon
• Language - e.g., language:bilingual

• Period - e.g., period:Neo-Assyrian
• Ancient date, as recorded on the tablet - e.g., date_of_origin:SE_61 (where SE = Seleucid Era)
• Date BC, as calculated from ancient date - e.g., date_remarks:250_BC

• Provenance - e.g., provenience:Kalhu (note US spelling)
• Findspot square (for Uruk tablets) - e.g., Ue_XVIII_1
• Excavation number - e.g, excavation_no:ND_4404
• Excavation season - e.g., provenience_remarks:1985-6 (note US spelling)
• Library - e.g., findspot_remarks:Ezida

• Browse or search the CAMS corpus [/cams/gkab/corpus/]

Printing

When you print a page, either in Page View or in Item View, the left-hand sidebar containing the search box and catalogue data is omitted.

Glossaries

For help with using the CAMS glossaries, please read the Oracc user documentation on glossaries [http://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/doc/user/glossaries/].

• Browse or search the CAMS corpus

Content last modified on 27 Dec 2019.

Eleanor Robson

Eleanor Robson, 'Using the Corpus of Ancient Mesopotamian Scholarship', The Geography of Knowledge, The GKAB Project, 2019 [http://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/cams/gkab/UsingtheCAMSGKABcorpus/]