About the Project

The open-access Babylonian Topographical Texts online (BTTo) website aims to make available the seventy-three texts edited in the book A.R. George, Babylonian Topographical Texts (Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta 40; Leuven: Peeters, 1992) and A.R. George, House Most High: The Temples of Ancient Mesopotamia (Mesopotamian Civilizations 5; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1993) in a fully searchable and grammatically and linguistically annotated (lemmatized) format. These editions will be accompanied by explanatory webpages that will provide information about these important, ancient Mesopotamian scholarly compositions, thereby making this small corpus of cuneiform documents easily and freely accessible.

Ruins of the city of Babylon and the abandoned palace of Saddam Hussein. Photo credit: Karen Radner (November, 2018).

BTTo, which is part of the project Living Among Ruins: The Experience of Urban Abandonment in Babylonia [https://www.en.ag.geschichte.uni-muenchen.de/research/livingamongruins/index.html] (see below), will produce new editions (transliterations with English and German translations) of the sixty-four Babylonian topographical texts edited in George, Babylonian Topographical Texts (BTT) and the nine temple lists published in George, House Most High (HMH). These important cuneiform texts celebrate the status of Mesopotamian cities as great religious centers and comprise lists of religious buildings and other important topographical features. The bulk of these texts deal with Babylon, while a few deal with other Babylonian cities (Borsippa, Nippur, Ur, etc.), as well as the Assyrian religious capital Ashur. The centerpieces of this Oracc-based [/oracc.org], open-access website are: Tintir = Babylon [/btto/tintir], the Götteradressbuch [/btto/gab], and the Canonical Temple List [/btto/Q004807]. In time, by the end of August 2022, the lemmatized editions will be accompanied by web resources that will make information about these scholarly compositions accessible to anyone interested in this group of ancient texts. The twofold purpose of BTTo is to update the now-twenty-five-year-old print editions published by A.R. George and to make these invaluable sources for Babylon's now lost topography better known and accessible.

Ruins of the city of Babylon, modern reconstruction of the city, and satellite image of the modern site.

As of May 2020, BTTo includes:

By the end of 2020, addition annotated texts will be added to the BTTo pager [/btto/pager] and numerous web resources will be uploaded with the BTTo portal. The project will be completed by the end of August 2022.

Sponsors

BTTo is part of the three-year, LMU-Munich-based project Living Among Ruins: The Experience of Urban Abandonment in Babylonia [https://www.en.ag.geschichte.uni-muenchen.de/research/livingamongruins/index.html], which is funded by the Gerda Henkel Stiftung [https://www.gerda-henkel-stiftung.de] as part of the program "Lost Cities. Wahrnehmung von und Leben mit verlassenen Städten in den Kulturen der Welt [https://www.gerda-henkel-stiftung.de/lost_cities]," coordinated by Prof. Dr. Martin Zimmermann [https://www.en.ag.geschichte.uni-muenchen.de/staff/staff/zimmermann_martin/index.html] (Historisches Seminar; LMU Munich), and Prof. Dr. Andreas Beyer [https://kunstgeschichte.philhist.unibas.ch/de/personen/andreas-beyer/] (University of Basel). BTTo is funded from September 2019 to August 2022.

Henkel logo

Moreover, BTTo's lemmatized editions are part of the Munich Open-access Cuneiform Corpus Initiative [https://www.en.ag.geschichte.uni-muenchen.de/research/mocci/index.html] (MOCCI), which is based at and supported by Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München [https://www.en.uni-muenchen.de/index.html]. Between 2015 and 2020, work on MOCCI was supported by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation [https://www.humboldt-foundation.de/web/home.html] through funds provided to LMU's Alexander von Humboldt Chair of the Ancient History of the Near and Middle East [https://www.en.ag.geschichte.uni-muenchen.de/chairs/chair_radner/staff_radner/index.html].

MOCCI logo

Logo of LMU and AvH

Project Team

Karen Radner (middle) visiting Uruk with Anmar A. Fadhil (right) and Frauke Weiershäuser (left).

The Living Among Ruins team is based at Historisches Seminar, LMU Munich and comprises Karen Radner [https://www.en.ag.geschichte.uni-muenchen.de/staff/staff/radner/index.html] (Chair for the Ancient History of the Near and Middle East), Jamie Novotny [https://www.en.ag.geschichte.uni-muenchen.de/staff/staff/novotny/index.html], Frauke Weiershäuser [https://www.en.ag.geschichte.uni-muenchen.de/staff/staff/weiershaeuser_frauke/index.html], and Giulia Lentini [https://www.en.ag.geschichte.uni-muenchen.de/staff/staff/lentini/index.html] (PhD research student under the supervision of Radner and Novotny).

From left to right, Frauke Weiershäuser, Jamie Novotny, and Giulia Lentini working on various Neo-Babylonian cylinders in the Vorderasiatisches Museum in Berlin and the British Museum in London.

BTTo Contributors

Giulia Lentini and Jamie Novotny are the principal contributors to this project. The annotated editions included on BTTo have been adapted from the careful, scholarly editions prepared by A.R. George in BBT and HMH.

 
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BTTo 2019-. BTTo is based at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Historisches Seminar (LMU Munich, History Department) - Alexander von Humboldt Chair for Ancient History of the Near and Middle East. BTTo is part of the three-year project Living Among Ruins: The Experience of Urban Abandonment in Babylonia (September 2019 to August 2022), which is funded by the Gerda Henkel Stiftung as part of the program "Lost Cities. Wahrnehmung von und Leben mit verlassenen Städten in den Kulturen der Welt," coordinated by Martin Zimmermann and Andreas Beyer. Content released under a CC BY-SA 3.0 [http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/] license, 2007-19.
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http://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/btto/abouttheproject/