CLA196

1. Full text searching in both English and Sumerian.
2. English translation and Sumerian transliteration of every text, and the ability to toggle between them; in the Sumerian transliterations you can position your mouse above a word and it will tell you what that word means.
3. A complete glossary / dictionary of Sumerian words in the corpus. From each entry you can generate a linked-list of all passages using that word. This will let you track some keyword, for instance if you wanted to find all examples of "storm". http://www-etcsl.orient.ox.ac.uk/edition2/etcsllemma.php
4. Similarly there is a master list of all proper nouns, from which you can generate a linked-list of all passages they occur in. This would let you find all passages featuring a particular god or hero: http://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/cgi-bin/etcslpropnoun.cgi

1. Focus on some one motif, image, character, god, etc. Using the words lists and search function you would track it through the corpus, gathering material as you went. You would then use this raw research material as the basis for an analysis of some sort. This could take the form of a traditional paper, with statement of problem / interest; exposition with citation and discussion of evidence; and concluding statement of results. For example you could compare all the scenes of city-destructions and see what they have in common to establish a definition of this as a 'type scene'; you could then note any significant departures form the convention and see what the effect is. Or you could collect all occurrences of the number seven and create an analytical catalogue, dividing the occurrences into categories, etc.

2. Similar to the last would be to choose a poem, or even a passage, that you find especially interesting—say the storm-battle in the Lament for Ur—and write a commentary on it, that is, a line-by-line discussion of what is interesting about it: particular words, difficulties of interpretation, use of imagery and other poetic devices, and so on. In order to shine light on these issues, you will need to do comparative work in the ETCSL: to take the same example, look for other poems which have mothers neglecting children, or children wailing for mothers, or boats rocked by winds, other storm scenes, etc. Even though a commentary goes line-by-line through a poem, it is non-linear in that you are drawing in material from all sorts of other places. The more in-depth you go, by the way, the shorter a passage you will need to pick, since your research / discussion will start burning up space quickly.

3. A new translation of some poem. Believe it or not, many translations of ancient texts on the market are done by people who do not know the ancient language in quesiton. A project like this would mean comparing at least three versions (probably from the ETCSL, Harps that Once . . . and ANET). Where the three versions agree, you can just retell the story. But you will find numerous disagreements. You would then go to the transliteration on the ETCSL, find the offending Sumerian word, find it in the glossary, and check a bunch of its other usages in an attempt to determine the best translation for your poem. You would then document this analytical process in a commentary to your poem, either attaching footnotes to the word in quesiton, or appending a line-by-line commentary to the end of your poem.

4. You could even do some original creative work based your research: a poem, even artwork of some sort. Please remember though that I am looking for evidence of substantial research work in the ETCSL. For instance, if you composed a new 'Lament for the World Trade Center' using all traditional Sumerian devices, you would provide footnotes or commentary, citing material from Sumerian poems, to justify why and how you are making the choices you are.