A Glossary of the Sumerian Emesal Songs and Prayers

Aims 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 lyrics being mainly the repertoire of the Gala-clerics and handed down in the Emesal (womens language) sociolect from the 2nd to the 1st millennium BCE. The selected corpus consists of Balags, Eršemmas (lament of the šem-drum?), the Šuilla- prayers (hand lifting prayers) composed in Emesal and the Eršahungas (lament that soothes the heart). All of them were in ritual use until the late period of Cuneiform culture. The reason for the choice of this corpus is the strong linguistic and functional coherence and the lack of a relevant lexicographical study of these texts, moreover they have been fairly neglected in the general research. These Emesal 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 compositions in their liturgical context. The material base for the Glossary are the editions hitherto available, if necessary, collations will be pursued. Presentation The development of the final shape of the dictionary entry will be an integral component of the research itself. 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 cabbalistic translations in bilingual versions. Details concerning syntactic and contextual use, secondary literature and necessary encyclopaedic information will be provided. 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. 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 FP27272240 "A Glossary of the Sumerian Emesal Songs and Prayers" was to lexicographically map a limited part of the Sumerian literature. To this day, Sumerian has not been recorded in a comprehensive lexicon. This sub-corpus consists of a group of texts that date from the early 2nd millennium BCE and were handed down to almost until the end of the cuneiform tradition (i.e. the beginning of the Common Era). Already in antiquity, so ancient catalogues tell us, they were considered to belong together. These texts, especially lamentation liturgies, were used in the course of cult and rituals. What is special to them is that, on the one hand they are performed in the dialect / sociolect / register of Emesal, and on the other hand, in the versions of the first millennium, they are provided with Akkadian translations. This is the reason, why these texts are particularly important and interesting for lexicographical recording.