#Corpus of Electronic Texts

[stairnaheireann]

Ancient Irish Law

‘Irish law is the oldest, most original, and most extensive of mediaeval European legal systems. It is a unique legal inheritance, an independent indigenous system of advanced jurisprudence that was fully evolved by the eighth century. It is also far less well-known than it deserves.’ ‘Early medieval Ireland evolved a system of law (often called ’Brehon’ law, from the Old Irish word brithemain…

[theaologies]

Godddddd academic websites with niche historical and deeply culturally important texts that haven’t been aesthetically updated since 1997 PLEASE never change

[ariel-seagull-wings]

@bixiebeet

"Sumerian is the first language for which we have written evidence and its literature the earliest known. The Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature (ETCSL), a project of the University of Oxford, comprises a selection of nearly 400 literary compositions recorded on sources which come from ancient Mesopotamia (modern Iraq) and date to the late third and early second millennia BCE.

The corpus contains Sumerian texts in transliteration, English prose translations and bibliographical information for each composition. The transliterations and the translations can be searched, browsed and read online using the tools of the website.

Funding for the ETCSL project came to an end in the summer of 2006 and no work is currently being done to this site or its contents.

For more information, see the About ETCSL menu or the site map.

In 2017, the Faculty of Oriental Studies IT Department carried a series of changes to the ETCSL backend, including upgrading the code to work on PHP7, the latest version of the software. Should you see any issues with the website, please contact us on the details on the General Info page."

[irish-dress-history]

Irish dress history sources online:

A list of sources for Irish dress history research that free to access on the internet:

Primary and period sources:

Text Sources:

Corpus of Electronic Texts (CELT): a database of historical texts from or about Ireland. Most have both their original text and, where applicable, an English translation. Authors include: Francisco de Cuellar, Luke Gernon, John Dymmok, Thomas Gainsford, Fynes Moryson, Edmund Spenser, Laurent Vital, Tadhg Dall Ó hUiginn

Images:

The Edwin Rae Collection: A collection of photographs of Irish carvings dating 1300-1600 taken by art historian Edwin Rae in the mid-20th c. Includes tomb effigies and other figural art.

National Library of Ireland: Has a nice collection of 18th-20th c. Irish art and photographs. Search their catalog or browse their flickr.

Irish Script on Screen: A collection of scans of medieval Irish manuscripts, including The Book of Ballymote.

The Book of Kells: Scans of the whole thing.

The Image of Irelande, with a Discoverie of Woodkarne by John Derricke published 1581. A piece of anti-Irish propaganda that should be used with caution. Illustrations. Complete text.

Secondary sources:

Irish History from Contemporary Sources (1509-1610) by Constantia Maxwell published 1923. Contains a nice collection of primary source quotes, but it sometimes modernizes the 16th c. English in ways that are detrimental to the accuracy, like changing 'cote' to 'coat'. The original text for many of them can be found on CELT, archive.org, or google books.

An Historical Essay on the Dress of the Ancient and Modern Irish By Joseph Cooper Walker published 1788. Makes admirable use of primary sources, but because of Walker's assumption that Irish dress didn't change for the entirety of the Middle Ages, it is significantly flawed in a lot of its conclusions. Mostly only useful now for historiography. I discussed the images in this book here.

Chapter 18: Dress and Personal Adornment from A Smaller Social History of Ancient Ireland by P. W. Joyce published 1906. Suffers from similar problems to An Historical Essay on the Dress of the Ancient and Modern Irish.

Consumption and Material Culture in Sixteenth-Century Ireland Susan Flavin's 2011 doctoral thesis. A valuable source on the kinds of materials that were available in 16th c Ireland.

A Descriptive Catalogue of the Antiquities in the Museum of the Royal Irish Academy Volumes 1 and 2 by William Wilde, published 1863. Obviously outdated, and some of Wilde's conclusions are wrong, because archaeologists didn't know how to date things in the 19th century, but his descriptions of the individual artifacts are worthwhile. Frustratingly, this is still the best catalog available to the public for the National Museum of Ireland Archaeology. Idk why the NMI doesn't have an online catalog, a lot museums do nowadays.

Volume I: Articles of stone, earthen, vegetable and animal materials; and of copper and bronze

Volume 2: A Descriptive Catalogue of the Antiquities of Gold in the Museum of the Royal Irish Academy

A Horsehair Woven Band from County Antrim, Ireland: Clues to the Past from a Later Bronze Age Masterwork by Elizabeth Wincott Heckett 1998

Jewellery, art and symbolism in Medieval Irish society by Mary Deevy in Art and Symbolism in Medieval Europe- Papers of the 'Medieval Europe Brugge 1997' Conference (page 77 of PDF)

Looking the part: dress and civic status and ethnicity in early-modern Ireland by Brid McGrath 2018

Irish Mantles, English Nationalism: Apparel and National Identity in Early Modern English and Irish Texts by John R Ziegler 2013

Dress and ornament in early medieval Ireland - exploring the evidence by Maureen Doyle 2014

Dress and accessories in the early Irish tale, ‘The Wooing of Becfhola’ by Niamh Whitfield 2006

A tenth century cloth from Bogstown Co. Meath by Elizabeth Wincott Heckett 2004

Tertiary Sources:

Medieval Ireland: An Encyclopedia edited by Sean Duffy published 2005

Re-Examining the Evidence: A Study of Medieval Irish Women's Dress from 750 to 900 CE by Alexandra McConnell

[sag-dab-sar]

📚Resources for The Ancient Near East📚

With a focus on religion

Getting Started On Research

JSTOR Guide LINK

Lumenlearning Guide LINK

Center for Online Education Guide LINK

Layman's Guide to Online Research by @/sisterofiris LINK

How to Vet Sources by me LINK

Websites for ANE Study

ETCSL | The Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature — http://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/catalogue.htm

ePSD | The Electronic Pennsylvania Sumerian Dictionary — http://psd.museum.upenn.edu/epsd-frame.html

ORACC | Open Richly Annotated Cuneiform Corpus — http://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/

ORACC's Mesopotamian Gods and Goddesses Project — http://oracc.iaas.upenn.edu/amgg/abouttheproject/index.html

ETANA | Electronic Tools & Ancient Near East Archive — http://etana.org/

CDLI | Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative — https://cdli.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/about

CAD | The Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago — http://www.aina.org/cad.html

Livius' Babylonian Section — https://www.livius.org/category/babylonia/

Multi Source Websites

Internet Archive Library — https://archive.org/details/texts | How To Use LINK

JSTOR — https://www.jstor.org/ | How To Use LINK

Google Scholar — https://scholar.google.com/intl/en/scholar/help.html

Google Books — https://books.google.com/googlebooks/about/index.html

Academia — https://support.academia.edu/hc/en-us/categories/360003163373-Academia-Free-Features

DOAJ Index of Open Access Journals — https://www.doaj.org/

Internet Ancient History Sourcebook — https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/ancient/asbook.asp

Met Museum Publications — https://www.metmuseum.org/met-publications

Holy Books — https://www.holybooks.com/about/

Internet Sacred Text Archive — https://sacred-texts.com/

Deepdyve is a website of academic journal articles that isn't free but it isn't outrageously expensive for what it offers if you are heavily invested in new research — https://www.deepdyve.com/

Please leave a comment if a link breaks I'll do my best to find a new one

I'm planning to probably break these down into their own post due to link limit!

Books

*When using older books be aware that there may be inaccuracies and out of date information. If at all possible cross-reference and synthesize with newer materials. I have added years for this reason.

Books Specifically on Religion

Introduction to Ancient Mesopotamian Religion by Tammi Schneider (2011) Google Books | Good overview, 130ish page easy read.

Gods Demons and Symbols of Ancient Mesopotamia by Jeremy Black and Anthony Greene (1992) Internet Archive

Ancient Near Eastern Mythology by Gwendolyn Leick (1991) Internet Archive | This & Black's dictionary are good starting off points but I always use additional source's because some of Leick's info tends to be more out of date than other authors.

The Ancient Gods by E O James (1960) Internet Archive

The Cultic Calendars of the Ancient Near East by Mark Cohen (1993) PDF

Preforming Death Social Analysis of Funerary Traditions in the Ancient Near East and Medditarian edited by Nicola Laneri (2007) PDF

Mesopotamian Ritual-prayers of “Hand-lifting”(Akkadian Šuillas) by Christopher G Frechette Internet Archive

When Gods Were Men: The Embodied God in Biblical and Near Eastern Literature by Esther Hamon Internet Archive

Stories From Ancient Canaan by Michael D. Coogan and Mark S. Smith (1901) 1st Edition Internet Archive | 2nd Edition Google Books

A Handbook to Gods and Goddesses of the Ancient Near East (2021) Google Books

The City of the Moon God by Tamara Green (1992) Google Books

The Myth of Sacred Prostitution in Antiquity by Stephanie Lynn Budin (2008) Google Books

Books on ANE History in General

Handbook to Life in Ancient Mesopotamia by Stephen Bertman (2005) Google Books | Highly recommended, easy read

Ancient Mesopotamia Portrait of Dead Civilization by A. Leo Oppenheim (1964) Internet Archive

A History of the Ancient Near East ca. 3000- 323BC by Marc Van de Mieroop (2016) Internet Archive

Everyday Life in Ancient Mesopotamia by Jean Bottero (1992) Internet Archive

Women in the Ancient Near East by Marten Stol (2016) Open Access

Chapter 3 Elamite from The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Ancient World Languages edited by Roger Wooard (2004) PDF

Sumerian Art by Andre Parrot (1970) Digital Library

Dictionaries of Civilization Mesopotamia: Assyrians, Sumerians, Babylonians by Enrico Ascalone and Simona Schultz (2007) Publisher Website Entry

The Greek Magical Papyri in Translation, Including the Demotic Spells edited by Hans Dieter Betz PDF (If that link breaks Google Books)

Babylon: Mesopotamia and The Birth of Civilization by Paul Kriwaczek (2012) Google Books

Daily Life in Ancient Mesopotamia by Karen Rhea Nemet-Nejat (2002) Google Books

Mesopotamia to Iraq A Concise History by Hans Nissen (2009) Google Books

In the Land of A Thousand Gods: A History of Asia Minor in the Ancient World by Christian Marek (2016) Google Books

Mesopotamia: The Invention of the City by Gwendolyn Leick (2002) Google Books

Palmyra by Paul Veyne (2017) Google Books

The Ancient Near East c. 3000-330 BC Volume 1 by Amélie Kuhrt (1995) Google Books

The Ancient Near East c. 3000-330 BC Volume 2 by Amélie Kuhrt (1995) Google Books

The Image of the Netherworld in the Sumerian Sources by Diana Katz (2003) Google Books

Journal Articles

Mesopotamian Pandemonium by Frans Wiggermann LINK

Nergal A by Frans Wiggerman LINK

The Four Winds and the Origins of Pazuzu by Frans Wiggermann LINK

Sumerian Texts Involving The Netherworld and Funerary Offerings by Jeremiah Peterson LINK

The Sexual Union of Enlil and Ninlil: an uadi Composition of Ninlil by Jeremiah Peterson LINK

New Year Ceremonies in Ancient Babylon: 'Taking Bel by the Hand' and a Cultic Picnic Religion Jeremy A Black LINK

Phenomenon of God-nap in Ancient Mesopotamia A Short Introduction Erika D. Johnson LINK

Preforming Death Social Analysis of Funerary Traditions in the Ancient Near East and Medditarian edited by Nicola Laneri LINK

Tablet of Destinies and the Transmission of Power in Enūma eliš by Karen Sonik LINK

Theology and Worship in Elam and Achaemenid Iran by Koch LINK

Evil against evil. The Demon Pazuzu by Nils P Heeßel LINK

New Readings in the Amarna Versions of Adapa and Nergal and Ereshkigal by Shlomo Izre'el LINK

The Origin of the Mystical Number Seven in Mesopotamian Culture: Division by Seven in the Sexagesimal Number System by Kazuo Muroi LINK

Athirat: As Found at Ras Shamra Justin Watkins LINK

Two Remarkable Vocabularies: Amorite-Akkadian Bilinguals! by Andrew George, Manfred Krebernik. Unfortunately now I can only find a paywalled version.

From Beyond Ereškigal? Mesopotamian Magic Tradition in the Papyri Graecae Magicae by Daniel Schwemer LINK

The Phoenician Presence in the Aegean during the Early Iron Age : Trade, Settlement and Cultural Interaction by Edizioni Quasar LINK

Invoking the God: Interpreting Invocations in Mesopotamian Prayers and Biblical Laments of the Individual by Alan Lenzi LINK

The Two Steles of Sargon: Iconology and Visual Propaganda at the Beginning of Royal Akkadian Relief by Lorenzo Nigro LINK

Asherah, the West Semitic Goddess of Spinning and Weaving? Susan Ackerman LINK

Ancient Ethics by Gerald Larue LINK

Early Bronze Age Graves at Gre Virike (Period II B): An Extraordinary Cemetery on the Middle Euphrates by A. Tuba Ökse LINK

The Evil Eye in Mesopotamia by Marie-Louise Thomsen LINK

Web Articles

Living Deities: Ancient Mesopotamian Patron Gods & Their Statues by Iilias Luursema on The Collector LINK

Armana Letters by Elizabeth Knott on Met Museum. LINK

Translations

*ETCSL is all translations of Sumerian literature!

Ishtar's Decent Translation & Recited in Akkadian LINK

The Harps That Once by Thorkild Jacobsen Google Books

The Project Gutenberg Sumerian Liturgies and Psalms by Stephen Langdon PDF

Project Gutenberg's Sumerian Hymns, by Frederick Augustus Vanderburgh LINK

Ancient Near East Anthology of Texts and Pictures edited by Pritchard 1st Edition Internet Archive

A Hymn to Tammuz (Cuneiform Texts from the British Museum, Tablet 15821, Plate 18) J. Dyneley Prince (1909) JSTOR

Ludlul Bel Nemegi by Alan Lenzi the Akkadian "Poem of the Righteous Sufferer" LINK

The Flood Myths LINK

Enūma Eliš Translations: L W King Translation 1902 LINK | ETANA Translation LINK | Composite Translation LINK

Code of Ur-Nammu LINK

Code of Liptin Ishtar LINK

The Legend of Sargon of Akkadê, c. 2300 BCE LINK

Other

Google Drive shared on Tumblr LINK

Dissertation: Personal Religion in Ancient Mesopotamia as shown in Akkadian Texts by Maurice Noil Leon Couve De Murville, University of London PDF

[unapologeticmelancholy]

Found this amusing. This is an excerpt from one of the earliest recorded texts in human history: the Sumerian Instructions of Shuruppak, 2600 BC. Oh, how little we've changed!

Source: Black, J.A., Cunningham, G., Fluckiger-Hawker, E, Robson, E., and Zólyomi, G., The Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature (http://www-etcsl.orient.ox.ac.uk/), Oxford 1998- .

[vedurnan]

Hello,

Do you keep any text written 1000+ years ago close to your heart? Do you feel like the features of people who wrote text so long ago can be seen in the people around you? Thanks for your time and your blogging.

there are a lot of sumerian proverbs from the electronic text corpus that i think about very often, i encourage you to look through that website because i am sure that some of them will really leap into your heart. every time i visit it i am struck by a new one, but here are some that have stayed in my mind for months and years:

it is not yet 1000+ years since dante, but i think about dante a lot, especially the vita nova and his descriptions of love... many people have read the divine comedy but not as many have read the vita nova. it is short and it's beautiful and fascinating, i highly recommend you to read it! https://digitaldante.columbia.edu/text/library/la-vita-nuova-frisardi/

dante's life was really crazy, if you are interested in his poetry at all i really recommend reading about his life especially his insane exile thing. he's like grimes to me

there are a lot of old english poems and riddles i think about a lot too. this one is the best

sometimes i feel like the difference between the people who live now and the people who lived then is extremely small. there are times when i wonder how i can even know for sure that any of this is as old as people say it is, and what if it was all fake and written by modern people? some part of it is fake and written by modern people anyway since it is all translated into comprehensible modern english. i always end up thinking it doesn't matter either way, the vast distance of history is given meaning within my mind, and there is some small part of me that exists outside of time and was there with them too

[electrificata]

if i was funnier i would have just dropped a link to the electronic text corpus of sumerian literature and moved on but unfortunately.

[mostlydeadlanguages]

I saw your blog and I think you might be able to help with something I've been failing to get anywhere with for a while! I'd like to get a tattoo of a line from one of Enheduana's hymns to Inana, but while I've managed to find translation, transliteration and references, I don't have the research chops to find the original cuneiform, which is what I really want.

The one I'm after is translated as "To rove around, to rush, to rise up, to fall down and to ...... a companion are yours, Inana." (Line 116 of 'A hymn to Inana (Inana C)') in the Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature.

Any chance you could hook me up?

Here's what I've got.

The tricky thing here is that the "original cuneiform" is dense and written in 3D, which makes it difficult to duplicate in a tattoo if you're just operating off a photo. But you can find photos of this text on the CDLI here, if you scroll down, to give you a sense of the problem.

A simpler route is to "cuneify" the values of the cuneiform symbols, i.e. to convert them into standardized Unicode symbols. Those will be much easier to copy. This is, I think, the line you want, in syllabic cuneiform:

𒌨 𒊒 𒌨 𒌌 𒇻 𒌌 𒍣 𒄑 𒍣 𒄖 𒊒 𒄭 𒀭 𒋫 𒋛 𒋛 𒋼 𒀭 𒈹 𒍝 𒀀 𒄰

(You'll need to install a cuneiform font for it to display right.)

All that said, for something to be tattooed permanently on your body, you want to be certain it's correct—and at the end of the day, I only have expertise in Akkadian, not Sumerian. (They're completely different languages that share a cuneiform writing system.) I would highly advise checking with @sumerianlanguage or another Sumerologist before you get anything inked.

[santoschristos]

Enki Enki and Ninhursag Artist: Karmazid Enki saw the man, he did not keep his hands straight, and decreed his fate, and put him in the king’s camp as a servant.

[spellbook-gayboy]

54? :D

54.

(Also I put this below the cut because it has major spoilers for the end of the comic!)

"...Is that your excuse now?" Ian asked, the look on his face caught somewhere between surprise and incredulity. "You've had almost nine years to come up with a reason for why everybody hates you, for why you're stuck as a fucking brain in a jar, and that's the best you can come up with?! Oh Rudy, you need to get out more."

The vocoder lit up with a fuzzy electronic hum, a sound that Ian had come to recognise as the closest that Robot could get to a growl. "What do you expect me to say?" He asked. The voice was staticky and the words were disjointed, like an old iPhone text-to-speech program. "'sorry'? We both know that's not going to happen, Ian. For better or worse, things are far better than before. Even you know that it worked."

Ian always found it funny that the vocoder still sounded more human than Rudy's actual voice.

He laughed. Ian laughed. It was simply too bizarre of a situation for him not to laugh. Here he was, one of the most powerful people on the planet, arguing with a brain in a jar, that had once been even more powerful, about the societal benefits of mass murder. "By the ancestors, this shit again? How many times do I need to tell you? You didn't fix anything! You could've fixed something, but no, you just papered over the cracks, covered the world in murder drones and called it a utopia.” He scoffed bitterly. “Funny thing about a utopia, Rudy, is that they usually don’t make the people in them afraid to look up!”

No reply, just the bubbling of the thick green fluid helping to keep his brain chugging along. “How is Amanda?”

“Oh, don’t play that fucking card with me!” Ian cut off, so enraged that he struck the strong plexiglass with his hand. “You don’t care about her, Rudy, you don’t. If you cared, you wouldn’t have thrown her into space for daring to question your oh-so glorious plan! That’s not love, Rudy, it’s just you, needing to fix everything, needing to control everything!”

Another hum. “All I wanted was to stop people suffering. Stop the decades of degradation and poverty and violence from going any further. If I have to be the villain in order to fix things, then I can live with that.”

“But you’re just any villain, are you? You’re Robot. The engineer. The genius. The backstabber. You could have fixed things any way you wanted, you might have been the only one that could have done it! But you didn’t, did you? You chose violence, chose to kill everyone that trusted you, and expected those of us you couldn’t kill to be fine with it, to just go ‘well he might’ve blown a hole in Black Samson, but at least the economy’s pretty good now!’. You can put yourself up on a cross, tell the public whatever lie you want, but us? The heroes that called you ‘friend’? To us, you’re just the traitor that got away with it.”

No reply again. The hum came, but nothing followed it. “How is she?”

“She’s well. They put her in charge of the new Teen Team. She’s happy, really happy. Happy, and free.” Ian stated flatly. “But we both know that’s not why I came here today.”

No words in reply. 

“You asked for an update on your health last time. I debated even doing it, but then I thought ‘what could be worse than how he is already is?’, so I pulled it from the director’s office.” Ian continued, producing a small stack of white and manila paper. “Neurologist’s reports, tweaks to the amniotic fluid, psychiatric reports, etcetera etcetera. Basically a lot of stuff I’m not legally allowed to see under HIPAA, but I get the feeling that you don’t care.”

“What do you see?”

“Not much. Everything seems normal, except...”

“Except what?”

Ian turned the papers over, stopping somewhere in the middle. “Report by Dr. Wittman, your neurologist. ‘Scans of the patient reveal damage in the subcortical basal ganglia, specifically in the corpus striatum region, consistent with the early warning signs of a potential...’.” Ian read from the page, slowing when he glimpsed the end of the sentence. “Oh. ‘a potential neurodegenerative disease. Tests will commence at the beginning of next month to determine the extent of the damage and possible avenues of treatment. Research into family medical records will also be required in order to determine a potential genetic component’.”

“...thank you, Ian. I suppose I should have seen this coming. Cloning can be such a dangerous undertaking, even when you take every precaution.”‘

“I... I’m sorry, Rudy.”

“Don’t be. It was my choice. I knew the risks.”

Ian didn’t know what to say. Nothing he could think of felt appropriate for the situation. The boiling anger was still churning in his gut, but now it mixed with a cold shock. He cleared his throat, “I should go.”

“Yes. Yes, you should.”

[nyessasundries]

Lament for Gilgamesh, performed by Peter Pringle on a reconstruction of the Gold Lyre of Ur

From the video description:

This video is a performance of a Sumerian incantation and lament upon the death of the hero, GILGAMESH. For those who are interested, the translation and transliteration of the Sumerian cuneiform tablets can be found online at the University of Oxford website - The Electronic Text Corpus Of Sumerian Literature.

“The Gold Lyre of Ur” was unearthed by archaeologist, Sir Leonard Woolley, in the 1920’s during his excavations in the Sumerian city of Ur, in modern day Iraq. Unfortunately, as you can see from the photo at the top of the video, there was little left of the lyre because the Sumerians simply put it into the ground 5000 years ago and covered it over with tons of earth. In the intervening millennia, everything that was degradable turned to dust, and only the imprint of the instrument was left, along with the stone mosaic decorations, the four vignettes made of shell, and the gold.

Thanks to very careful measurements and photos taken by Woolley, museum curators have been able to reconstruct the fragile bits and pieces, and the instrument is now on display in Baghdad. What you see in this video is my own replica, made from cedar like the original. Needless to say, I used brass sheeting instead of gold, but it is unlikely that the ornamentation would change the basic sound of the instrument.

A lyre of this size, whose lowest note is the same as the lowest ‘C’ on a piano keyboard, would probably have been used as a drone instrument, and would not have been used to play melodies like a harp or a smaller lyre. The bench-shaped bridges used on these instruments, suggest that they probably “buzzed” like the modern Indian tamboura, or the Ethiopian “begena” lyre. The buzzing sound made possible by the wide flat bridge, greatly increases the volume output of the string, as well as the decay time of the vibration.

The large “balag” drum you see on my left in the video, is four feet (120 cm) in diameter, and was a common percussion instrument in Sumer, although there are none that have survived the ages. These drums were an integral part of ceremonies to summon the souls in the “Netherworld” because, as you can hear, they make enough noise “to wake the dead”! The belief in an afterlife was an integral part of Sumerian culture, and I highly recommend Dr. Irving Finkel’s wonderful book on the subject, THE FIRST GHOSTS.

The video of my full performance was too long, so I have edited it down to about 8 minutes (still too long IMO). Much of this sort of incantation was repetition, but I suspect the ancient Sumerians had a greater tolerance for long, drawn-out rituals than most of us do today. I chopped several minutes out of the middle.

We have the Sumerian cuneiform texts, as well as some of the musical instruments, but we do not have the melodies because the Sumerians didn’t write them down. I believe that the parts that were sung were probably largely improvised, just as they are today in the Middle East and the Indian subcontinent. Ancient Sumerian teachers did not write down their music because they taught mainly by memory and by ear.

From the standpoint of a singer, I have performed these texts in a loud, declarative style. The Sumerians did not have amplification, and singers had to be heard by large crowds at temple gatherings, or sometimes outside.

[covenawhite66]

Founded in the second millennium before Christ, the ancient metropolis was the seat of King Hammurabi, who expanded the empire he inherited so that it stretched from the Persian Gulf to northern Iran.

The Babylonians wrote in cuneiform characters on clay tablets, which have survived in the form of countless fragments

There is now a digital database of thousands of cuneiform tablet fragments.

The team is training an algorithm to piece together fragments that have yet to be situated in their proper context. Already, the algorithm has newly identified hundreds of manuscripts and many textual connectio.

Previously, there were no known hymns to cities in Babylonian literature. We have found 15 new fragments of this text.

[jcmarchi]

Researcher Develops Domain-Specific Scientific Chatbot

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/researcher-develops-domain-specific-scientific-chatbot/

Researcher Develops Domain-Specific Scientific Chatbot

In scientific research, collaboration and expert input are crucial, yet often challenging to obtain, especially in specialized fields. Addressing this, Kevin Yager, leader of the electronic nanomaterials group at the Center for Functional Nanomaterials (CFN), Brookhaven National Laboratory, has developed a game-changing solution: a specialized AI-powered chatbot.

This chatbot stands out from general-purpose chatbots due to its in-depth knowledge in nanomaterial science, made possible by advanced document retrieval techniques. It taps into a vast pool of scientific knowledge, making it an active participant in scientific brainstorming and ideation, unlike its more general counterparts.

Yager’s innovation harnesses the latest in AI and machine learning, tailored for the complexities of scientific domains. This AI tool transcends the traditional boundaries of collaboration, offering scientists a dynamic partner in their research endeavors.

The development of this specialized chatbot at CFN marks a significant milestone in digital transformation in science. It exemplifies the potential of AI in enhancing human intelligence and expanding the scope of scientific inquiry, heralding a new era of possibilities in research.

Kevin Yager (Jospeh Rubino/Brookhaven National Laboratory)

Embedding and Accuracy in AI

The unique strength of Kevin Yager’s specialized chatbot lies in its technical foundation, particularly the use of embedding and document-retrieval methods. This approach ensures that the AI provides not only relevant but also factual responses, a critical aspect in the realm of scientific research.

Embedding in AI is a transformative process where words and phrases are converted into numerical values, creating an “embedding vector” that quantifies the text’s meaning. This is pivotal for the chatbot’s functioning. When a query is posed, the bot’s machine learning (ML) embedding model computes its vector value. This vector then navigates a pre-computed database of text chunks from scientific publications, enabling the chatbot to pull semantically related snippets to better understand and respond to the question.

This method addresses a common challenge with AI language models: the tendency to generate plausible-sounding but inaccurate information, a phenomenon often referred to as ‘hallucinating’ data. Yager’s chatbot overcomes this by grounding its responses in scientifically verified texts. It operates like a digital librarian, adept at interpreting queries and retrieving the most relevant and factual information from a trusted corpus of documents.

The chatbot’s ability to accurately interpret and contextually apply scientific information represents a significant advancement in AI technology. By integrating a curated set of scientific publications, Yager’s AI model ensures that the chatbot’s responses are not only relevant but also deeply rooted in the actual scientific discourse. This level of precision and reliability is what sets it apart from other general-purpose AI tools, making it a valuable asset in the scientific community for research and development.

Demo of chatbot (Brookhaven National Laboratory)

Practical Applications and Future Potential

The specialized AI chatbot developed by Kevin Yager at CFN offers a range of practical applications that could significantly enhance the efficiency and depth of scientific research. Its ability to classify and organize documents, summarize publications, highlight relevant information, and quickly familiarize users with new topical areas stands to revolutionize how scientists manage and interact with information.

Yager envisions numerous roles for this AI tool. It could act as a virtual assistant, helping researchers navigate through the ever-expanding sea of scientific literature. By efficiently summarizing large documents and pointing out key information, the chatbot reduces the time and effort traditionally required for literature review. This capability is especially valuable for keeping up with the latest developments in fast-evolving fields like nanomaterial science.

Another potential application is in brainstorming and ideation. The chatbot’s ability to provide informed, context-sensitive insights can spark new ideas and approaches, potentially leading to breakthroughs in research. Its capacity to quickly process and analyze scientific texts allows it to suggest novel connections and hypotheses that might not be immediately apparent to human researchers.

Looking to the future, Yager is optimistic about the possibilities: “We never could have imagined where we are now three years ago, and I’m looking forward to where we’ll be three years from now.”

The development of this chatbot is just the beginning of a broader exploration into the integration of AI in scientific research. As these technologies continue to advance, they promise not only to augment the capabilities of human researchers but also to open up new avenues for discovery and innovation in the scientific world.

Balancing AI Innovation with Ethical Considerations

The integration of AI in scientific research necessitates a balance between technological advancement and ethical considerations. Ensuring the accuracy and reliability of AI-generated data is paramount, especially in fields where precision is crucial. Yager’s approach of basing the chatbot’s responses on verified scientific texts addresses concerns about data integrity and the potential for AI to produce inaccurate information.

Ethical discussions also revolve around AI as an augmentative tool rather than a replacement for human intelligence. AI initiatives at CFN, including this chatbot, aim to enhance the capabilities of researchers, allowing them to focus on more complex and innovative aspects of their work while AI handles routine tasks.

Data privacy and security remain critical, particularly with sensitive research data. Maintaining robust security measures and responsible data handling is essential for the integrity of scientific research involving AI.

As AI technology evolves, responsible and ethical development and deployment become crucial. Yager’s vision emphasizes not just technological advancement but also a commitment to ethical AI practices in research, ensuring these innovations benefit the field while adhering to high ethical standards.

You can find the published research here.

[vedurnan]

electronic text corpus of sumerian literature, proverbs collection 3, segment A

[goatsgomoo]

No tinfoil hat needed to explain the situation.

But first, on AI as a concept:

Artificial intelligence is when a machine makes decisions and/or performs actions in order to achieve goals.

AI as a field is so much older than the latest boom and broader than what the current big names are doing. There are a few AI developments (such as the chess-playing mechanical automaton El Ajedrecista (1912) and the electro-mechanical Nimatron (1940)) which predate programmable (as opposed to hard-wired) electronic computers. Once we had programmable computers, we got systems like Logic Theorist (1956) and General Problem Solver (1958).

We had ELIZA in the 60s, the rise of Expert Systems in the 60s through the 80s (until they became so commonplace that the name fell out of use), and once the Internet became public and the Web was invented, all sorts of AI systems that leveraged access to large data sets to make decisions, such as Google's search engine and Netflix's recommendation algorithm.

So yes, of course people are going to describe things older than the current boom as AI; that's an accurate description!

Translation algorithm? Nope. AI translation.

This is basically the ultimate example of a piece of software that is incontrovertibly AI! It's not just some lookup table where you find the passage of text you want to translate then grab the translated text in your target language; translation software has to handle text it's never seen before. It needs to "understand" grammar rules of different languages, it needs to "know" vocabulary, and it needs to make decisions on ambiguous text. Whether this is done through a large corpus of rules programmed into the software or through statistical modeling is irrelevant; it's AI either way. And if you think that the rise of machine translation didn't impact a whole lot of jobs, you're dead wrong.

My point here is twofold:

What you are calling "AI" is artificially narrow and doesn't really match with accepted definitions

The current boom didn't come out of nowhere, it's just the latest iterative improvements in a field older than you. So calling things that AI researchers in the 90s and 00s worked on "AI" is perfectly reasonable.

Second, on the explosion in the popularity of the term "AI" to describe software:

(And here's where I stop citing Wikipedia because I'm drawing more on my own observations and personal experience)

Sorry to say, but this trend is pretty much entirely consumer driven. People want the latest and greatest, people want the top of the line, people want things marketed as AI. And most of these people don't know enough to have a solid idea of exactly what functionality or performance they want; they just see "AI" and are impressed. The tech companies slapping the term on their products are mostly just meeting a demand and get rewarded immensely for doing so.

Now, of course, investors in tech companies are also exerting pressure to market themselves as AI or integrate AI into their products to capitalize on this trend. And a lot of companies who had been just quietly creating products with AI and/or ML (whether the AI is in the product or just used as part of its creation) are realizing that being louder about that fact will get them money. Because yeah, a red eye removal tool is absolutely AI, and if you can increase your sales figures by 10% by telling people that, you'd be a fool not to. And like everything else, this trend is older than the current big boom; when I worked at IBM my division got renamed to include the term "Watson" back around 2017-2018 despite nothing changing about the products we were making.

Now, all that leads up to my main point, which is not in fact about nit-picking language use. First, from your post:

my tinfoil hat theory is that they're trying to get the term "AI" to replace the term "software" to make the people who are opposed to the labor-rights-violating, job-stealing, "boss threatens to replace you with it if your wages and benefits prove too expensive" AI seem like backwards luddites who hate technology

Look, this has been going on forever, the "AI" term is irrelevant. The original Luddites were laborers who were seeing their ways of life destroyed by mechanization. The introduction of automation into manufacturing processes also impacted jobs. More recently, grocery stores and fast food restaurants have been replacing cashiers with touchscreens. And every step of the way, there's been a whole lot of ink spilled by people complaining about losing their jobs to more and more advanced tools, and by people telling the folks losing their jobs to shut up and get out of the way of "progress".

Zero jobs are stolen, zero creativity lost, zero labor issues at play, just VFX professionals paid to apply a digital effect.

So why decide that these latest developments is your cutoff for what is and isn't acceptable? Why is digital VFX, eliminating the jobs of people who would hand-paint individual frames of film, acceptable?

I ask because I want to encourage people to think about what exactly they take issue with here. If everything before you started paying attention is normal and fine and isn't a labor issue, but changes to the current situation are obviously serious problems, then you're going to sometimes find yourself on the side of people who've been making things worse for decades because their success is now "normal". And (this part isn't directed at you but more towards the people whose takes you were mentioning) if your opposition to things is based on what buzzwords are being used, that leaves you wide open to being manipulated quite easily into getting angry at something rather innocuous. While in this case that's a pretty minor impact, this is the exact same trap I see people falling into (or setting for others) when calling for online censorship or harassment.

Latest tech pet peeve is the use of the term "AI" to refer to basically anything that does any amount of automation or uses computers in any way