This page explains how to browse and search eCUT, as well as how to use the associated glossaries.
The text editions are based on Mirjo Salvini's Corpus dei testi urartei I–V, which, to date, is by far the most comprehensive and most recent scholarly treatment of Urartian texts.
Currently, eCUT only comprises the editions of the stone and rock inscriptions published by Mirjo Salvini in CTU I (Rome 2008), as well as in CTU V (Paris 2018), in an updated form. For eCUT, Birgit Christiansen adapted, revised, lemmatized, and translated into English the editions of CTU. The editions are released under a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike license.
You may find it helpful to read the Oracc Help Page [http://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/doc/help/visitingoracc/index.html] before you start to explore eCUT for the first time. If your browser has problems displaying the special transliteration characters such as Š and š (Shin), Ṣ and ṣ (Sade), and Ṭ and ṭ (Tet), then you may want to download Steve Tinney's Ungkam font [http://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/doc/help/visitingoracc/fonts/index.html] for Mac, Windows, or Linux. If you're still having trouble viewing these characters, then you'll need to correctly set the character encoding on your browser.
If you want to access the editions, please go to "Browse online Corpus" [http://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/ecut/corpus/]. Following the conventions of the Oracc projects, all of the texts in the corpus are listed as composites, even if they came down to us only in a single source/exemplar. On the left of the page, you can find an alphabetical list of the Urartian rulers. In addition, the numbers under which they are listed in Salvini's CTU volumes are given in brackets. The numbers indicate the chronological order of the rulers as assumed by Salvini. It should be noted, however, that this sequence is now rejected by many researchers for good reasons. See the page "Urartian Rulers and Chronology" [http://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/ecut/urartianrulersandchronology/index.html]. The letter A preceding the individual number indicates that the text is a rock or stone inscription (or, respectively, monumental), the letter B indicates that it is an inscription on other material published in CTU V.
The following list is to provide an overview of the numbering of the various sub-corpora of the stone and rock inscriptions and the number of individual inscriptions known so far (inscriptions known from more than one exemplar are counted as one text).
In order to list the texts in the correct order, the text are listed as A 01-01 instead of A 1-1 and A 5-001 instead of A 5-1.
The Item View shows the transliteration and translation of an individual text. If the text is known from more than one exemplar the best preserved exemplar is used as the master text (usually this exemplar is given the number A whereas the less well-preserved exemplars are listed as numbers B, C, D etc.). Please note that the individual exemplars might differ from each other to a greater or lesser extant. Most frequent are different spellings of individual words, less frequent are (intended or unintended) omissions or additions.
In the editions, individual signs or whole words which are not preserved in the master text are, if possible, restored by other exemplars of the same composition (usually referred to as duplicates). The broken passages are marked by square brackets enclosing the restored signs or words. If the text can be restored by texts that do not belong to the same compositions, these restorations are also marked by square brackets enclosing the restored signs or words.
Example: The transliteration dḪal-[di] shows that the cuneiform sign DI which is used to write the name of the Urartian national god Ḫaldi is not preserved in the respective exemplar and therefore restored. If a restoration of a sign is uncertain, it is marked by a question mark following the sign.
If you want to know the meaning of an individual word place the cursor over it. This makes you see its outline glossary entry. In order to access the full glossary entry click on the word. Aside from the meaning of the word, also a morphological analysis (or: morphological transcription) of the word is given which provides information about the grammatical elements of which the respective word (or, resp., form) consists. In the glossary, this morphological analysis is listed under the rubric "normalized forms" (the label is due to the Oracc conventions, although it does not fit well) whereas the syllabic writing of the word is listed under the rubric "written forms".
Example: the verbal form uštabi "set off" which in the cuneiform text is written in the syllabic writing uš-ta-bi is listed under the rubric "written forms" in this spelling, whereas under the rubric "normalized forms" the morphological analysis is given as ušt=a=bi. The first element ušt represents the root ušt- "set off". The following element a, separated from the root and the following element by equal signs, indicates that the verb is intransitive. The following element bi shows that the verb is a 3rd person singular preterite. Thus, the verb is to be translated by "he set off". Similarily, the verbal form šidištuni "he built" is given in the written forms ši-di-iš-tú-ú-ni, ši-i-di-iš-tú-ni and sim., and the morphological analysis is given as šidišt=u=ni. The first element denotes the root šid- "build", extended by the suffix -išt- which probably denotes the perfect or finite aspect (and thus the completion of the action). The second element -u- denotes that the verb is transitive, whereas the third element -ni denotes that the subject of the verb (or, the agent) is a 3rd person singular. At the same time, it denotes that the object (or, patient) is a 3rd person singular. In the Urartian inscriptions the verbal form is used in sentences such as "King X, son of Y, built this building". An example is to be found in the inscription A 2-2 of king Išpuini: miš-pu-ú-i-ni-i-še mdsar5du-ú-ri-e-ḫi-ni-e-še i-ni É-e za-a-du-ú-ni which in a morphological transcription is to be rendered as Išpuini=še Sardure=hi=NE=še ini É-e zad=u=ni, or respectively, Išpuini=še Sarduri=hi=NI=še ini É-e zad=u=ni "Išpuini built this building" since the Urartians used to write the same grammatical forms sometimes with an i vowel and sometimes with an e vowel.
The left-hand sidebar of the Item View page gives the following information:
Names
The eCUT assigned designation of the "composite" text (i.e. the individual text if it is only known to us from one exemplar, or, if the text came down to us in more than one exemplar, the best preserved exemplar which is used as a master text.
Numbers
The Oracc Qcat" [http://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/qcat/] catalogue number (Q+unique six-digit identifier), the eCUT assigned designation of the "composite" text.
Views
[There are currently no other views available.]
At present, you can restrict catalogue (CAT) searches to the following fields by entering the field name followed by a colon and then what you are searching for, with no space between:
Catalogue searches are not case sensitive.
When you print a page, either in Page View or in Item View, the left-hand sidebar containing the search box and catalogue data is omitted.
For help with using the eCUT glossaries, please read the "Oracc user documentation on glossaries" [http://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/doc/help/glossaries/index.html].
Birgit Christiansen
Birgit Christiansen, 'Using eCUT ', Electronic Corpus of Urartian Texts (eCUT) Project, The eCUT Project, a sub-project of MOCCI, 2019 [http://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/ecut/usingecut/]