With this app, you can transliterate and translate some of the information from the UET VII 126 tablet with the push of a button. The app also contains a link to informative slides on Academia.Edu and to the Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (CDLI). About the tablet: The lexical tablet UET VII 126 (U.3011), housed at the National Museum of Iraq, is written in the Sumerian and Akkadian languages (in the cuneiform script). It is dated to the Neo-Babylonian period (c. 600-800 BCE) and can be considered a music ‘theory’ text because it lists and names the string order of an unknown stringed instrument believed to be an ancient harp/lyre (likely a vertical/horizontal harp). The tablet includes the Sumerogram “sa./SA” (a Sumerian Logogram) which can be translated to mean “string”. In the Sumerian column, “sa.” is not capitalised. It is in bold text because only the Sumerian language is used. When this Sumerogram is embedded into another language (such as Akkadian), as it appears on CBS 10996, it is represented in uppercase (“SA”). The tablet importantly indicates that certain strings are placed at the “back” and “front” of the instrument. Some unique position identifiers also indicate strings of different tensions (some strings are "small" and "thin" and therefore represent a higher tension). It is important to note that the Sumerian information from the first column is arbitrary and does not share an exact lexical relation. This suggests that the Akkadian scribes may have ‘guessed how the earlier Sumerians would have referred to the same information. This accounts for the experienced ambiguities. This information is important for Musicologists/Archaeomusicologists since it shows that the intended instrument as described on the tablet had higher string tensions at the ‘front’.
UET VII 126
