Searching the Oracc corpora

There are many ways to search the Oracc corpora. This page describes how to search the transliterations, translations, and catalogue data. Instructions on searching the glossaries and on advanced search are given on separate pages.

General principles | Searching transliterations | Searching translations | Searching catalogue data

General principles

Read the help section about the search zone before you begin.

Searching the transliterations

You can use the search box in the header to search for sequences of signs within the transliterations. However, searching for Akkadian or Sumerian words, regardless of spelling, is best done within the glossaries.

To search within the transliterations, type !txt followed by a space and the sequence of signs you want to find into the search box and click "Search". The lines containing that sequence will be displayed in the the Main Pane, with the relevant word highlighted. You can choose whether to see the results within lines, sentences, or keyword-in-context.

Click on the coloured designation (publication number or composition name) to the right to see the whole text of each tablet or composition found. Place the cursor over a word to see its outline glossary entry, and click on the word to go to its full glossary entry. In some Oracc Projects you can sort the found records by genre, period, and provenance as described for Outline Mode.

Use the following conventions when you type in the search box depending on whether or not you have ticked the Unicode box:

Unicode

• type consonants such as ḫ, ŋ, ṣ, š, and ṭ in the usual way. You can find suitable Unicode fonts and keyboards elsewhere on this site.
• type diacritics as subscript numerals not as acute or grave accents (e.g., ša₂ and ša₃)
• type logograms in capital letters, preceded by l: (ell then colon) (e.g., l:ŠA₃ finds all occurrences of ŠÀ in logograms)
• type sign names in capital letters, preceded by s: (s colon) (e.g., s:ŠA₃ finds all occurrences of ŠÀ in logograms and syllabic writings lìb)

ASCII (non-Unicode)

• type h for ḫ (e.g., ha finds ḫa)
• type j for ŋ (e.g., jen finds ŋen)
• type s, (s comma) for ṣ (e.g., s,a finds ṣa)
• type sz for š (e.g., sza finds ša)
• type t, (t comma) for ṭ (e.g., t,a finds ṭa)
• type diacritics as normal numerals 0-9 (e.g., sza2 finds šá and sza3 finds šà)
• type logograms in capital letters, preceded by l: (ell then colon) (e.g., l:SZA3 finds all occurrences of ŠÀ in logograms)
• type sign names are in capital letters, preceded by s: (s colon) (e.g., s:SZA3 finds all occurrences of ŠÀ in logograms and syllabic writings lìb)

Either/both

• type hyphens - to connect signs within words (e.g., i-na finds the sequence i-na in any word)
• type underscores _ to connect adjacent signs in different words (e.g., i_na finds all words that end with -i and that are followed by a word beginning with na-)
• type tildes ~ to connect adjacent signs, whether they are in the same word or not (e.g., i~na finds both of the above)

There is a list of unicode characters for cuneiform transliteration elsewhere on these help pages, and an explanation of the difference between unicode and ASCII transliteration on the Cuneiform Revealed [http://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/saao/knpp/cuneiformrevealed/aboutcuneiform/computercuneiform] website.

Searching the translations

You can use the search box to search for words within the English translations, by typing !tra followed by a space and then your search term.

The search engine understands the basics of English morphology so that if, for instance, you search for "king", it will find "king" and related words such as "kings" and "kingly". But it will not find words such as "asking", "speaking" or "waking" which contain the characters "king" but have nothing to do with monarchs.

The search engine will display all relevant paragraphs with your search term highlighted. You can click on the link on the right of each entry to see the word in the context of the entire text. You can sort your finding by period, provenance, and genre using the outline of the left.

You can also search for English words in any of the project's glossaries.

Searching the catalogue data

To search within the catalogue data, type !cat into the search box followed by a space and your search term. Here are some hints for more efficient catalogue searching:

• You don't need to use long vowels to search the catalogue data: just use normal vowel characters.
• The catalogue search is not case-sensitive: do not worry about capital letters.
• Do not use leading (initial) zero in numbers or commas between words.
• To search for multi-word phrases, separate the words with an underscore (e.g., STT_1_15 finds STT 1, 015)

You can restrict your catalogue searches to particular fields, by entering the field name followed by a colon and then what you are searching for, with no space between. Not every project uses the same catalogue fields; see the project's website for more information about these.

• Designation (publication number) - 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
• 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 - e.g., findspot:Ue_XVIII_1
• Excavation number - e.g, excavation_no:ND_4404

Eleanor Robson

Eleanor Robson, 'Searching the Oracc corpora', Oracc: The Open Richly Annotated Cuneiform Corpus, Oracc, 2019 [http://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/doc/search/searchingcorpora/]