Glossary of the Sumerian Canonical Balag Songs

A compendious Lexicon of the Sumerian Language is still a desideratum. Present efforts in Sumerian lexicography focus on literary and economical and administrative texts. The aim of the project is to develop a Lexicon of the Sumerian Language of a specific group of Sumerian cult songs being the repertoire of the gala-clerics and handed down in the Emesal ("women`s language") vernacular from the 2nd to the 1st millennium BCE. The reason for the choice of this corpus and this delimitation is the lack of a relevant lexicographical study of these texts, moreover they have been fairly neglected in the general research. Bala? songs are both an important source for the history of religion and for the diachronic study of the Sumerian language. The delimitation of the outline of the corpus follows an ancient catalogue of Cult songs. This literary catalogue (4R2 53+) lists different Bala? songs in their liturgical context. It still serves nowadays as a source for listing and quoting the canonical Bala? songs. The material base for the Glossary are the editions hitherto available, if necessary, collations will be pursued. Presentation The dictionary entry will contain the headwords, sources for phonology if available, lexical category, translation of the basic meaning and an overview of the derivated meanings. Extant Akkadian translations will be mentioned including evaluation as e.g. in cases of a non-verbal translation in bilingual versions. Details concerning syntactic and contextual use, secondary literature and necessary encyclopaedic informations will be provided. The development of the final shape of the dictionary entry will be an integral component of the research itself. Publication Some material of the glossary has already been recorded in a database providing lemmatized and full text search functions. Interim results will be discussed on conferences and it is intended to organize a meeting within the next two years. Single studies on selected topics will be published as papers. The preliminary version of the glossary will be published as a free accessible database and as a PDF-book, which can easily be adapted and re-edited. A final version of the glossary will be printed. There is an offer to publish it in a new series of Emesal editions planned at Heidelberg University. With this glossary, the tradition of lexicographical work on Sumerian at Innsbruck University shall be re-vitalized and re-activated.

The aim of the project was a lexicographical study of a well-defined corpus of Sumerian literature, namely bala?-compositions, cultic songs, which were handed down over a long time span, also in bilingual versions. This bilingualism of the texts was systematically used for the lexicographical work.Sumerian is, according to present knowledge, an isolated language. Sumerian was a spoken language in Mesopotamia, the south of todays Iraq, during the third Millennium BC. Our knowledge of Sumerian is based on a huge number of texts, that have come down to us on endurable writing materials like clay and stone. Thanks to these tablets we can grasp a phase of over 500 years in which Sumerian was a spoken language. Around the year 2000 Sumerian died out as an everyday-language and was only used in learned circles and in cult. After the death of Sumerian Mesopotamian scribes created long bilingual lexical list. In these lists the pronunciation of a Sumerian sign was given and the Sumerian was translated into Akkadian. Akkadian belongs to the family of Semitic languages (like Arabic or Hebrew) and became the dominant language in Mesopotamia towards the end of the third millennium.The bala?-songs treated in the project belong to this sphere of learned bilingualism. The origins of the bala?-songs remain somewhat vague, as all the available texts seem to date after the end of Sumerian as a spoken language. Bala?-songs were a central part of the cult and they were performed and handed down by a cultic singer, the gala (Sumerian) / kal (Akkadian). During the first millennium these difficult Sumerian texts were explained and analyzed with Akkadian interlinear translations. Additionally the canonical songs were collected in catalogues. The texts are not written in the so called main-dialect of Sumerian but in a variant of Sumerian designated as Emesal (womens language / fine language). For a long time these texts were outside the focus of most Sumerologists, as their language was regarded as a decayed version of Sumerian.These bilingual texts form the material base for the glossary. The aim of the glossary is a lexicographical study of these texts. Hitherto a complete dictionary of Sumerian, that meets the scholarly standards, is one of the main desiderata in the field of Sumerology, therefore all lexical contribution to the field are most welcome. During the project 6500 lines of texts, often consisting of a Sumerian and Akkadian texts, were checked concerning their correct reading with the help of photos and copies, were adopted to the latest standards of transcriptions and prepared for their use for the glossary by the creation of 16000 keywords. A follow-up-project enabled us to include three smaller corpora of Emesal songs. This will lead to an enhanced glossary that will provide a lexical treatment of the most important groups of Emesal prayers and songs.