ISO/IEC JTC1/SC2/WG2 N2585
2003-05-25
Universal Multiple-Octet Coded Character Set
International Organization for Standardization
Organisation internationale de normalisationеждународная организация по стандартизации
Doc Type: Working Group Document
Title:
Basic principles for the encoding of Sumero-Akkadian Cuneiform
Source: Michael Everson and Karljürgen Feuerherm
Status:Individual Contribution
Action:For consideration by JTC1/SC2/WG2 and UTC
Date:
2003-05-25
An informal agenda outline for the second Initiative for Cuneiform Encoding conference (ICE2), to beheld 2003-06-5/7 was recently posted to the Cuneiform Discussion List (cuneiform@unicode.org).
Because a number of the suggested agenda items had already been discussed at the first Initiative for
Cuneiform Encoding conference (ICE1), and have since then received further consideration by various
individuals and groups – for example the Cuneiform Computer Code Project (CCCP;
http://members.rogers.com/cuneiform) – and because Michael Everson, a primary representative forUnicode and ISO/IEC JTC1/SC2/WG2 for the encoding of scripts, was not in attendance at that
conference, it seemed best to review these questions with him in light of intervening discussions and torecord in a formal document our assessment of the prevailing thinking on these matters, in the hope of
rendering the ICE2 conference more productive by reducing unnecessary discussion of agreed-upon
points.
The questions (as originally posed) and what we believe to be their appropriate answers follow.
1.

“What exact period will we begin with in our encoding? (We have previously ruled out
archaic cuneiform.)”

It seems agreed by all that to attempt to cover the entire scope of Sumero-Akkadian or Mesopotamian
Cuneiform with a single encoding effort would be too great a task for practical purposes. Accordingly, it
is our view that the decision as to whether or not to rule out a unification of the archaic script should bedeferred pending further study. In any case, from a practical point of view, it is clear that a staged
encoding process is called for. If this is so, Question (1) properly becomes “What should be the lower
temporal boundary of encoding for Stage One?” Practically speaking, this means choosing a boundary
which avoids a minimalist encoding on one hand (reducing the scope to the trivial) and a maximalist
encoding, as just rejected, on the other.
During ICE1, the two main candidates proposed for the lower encoding boundary were the Ur III (orNeo-Sumerian) period (ca. 2112–2004 BCE by the Middle Chronology – Middle Chronology figures are
the better-known and the choice of chronology is of little consequence for encoding in any case) and theOld Babylonian period (ca. 2003–1595 BCE). The Old Assyrian period, more or less contemporaneouswith the Old Babylonian period but associated with the northern territory of Assyria rather than thesouthern territory of Babylonia – more properly known as Sumer and Akkad – is under-represented interms of texts and so is not a suitable candidate. The script of the Ur III period is characterised by crisp
and well-defined glyphs, whereas the Old Babylonian period is extensively documented, has been wellstudied, and is well understood.

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In general, all other things being equal, it is our view that we should opt for the earlier period (Ur III)
until and unless practical considerations during the actual processing of the material suggest otherwise.
(For instance, if we had a lack of qualified cuneiform professionals specializing in Ur III with time toinvest, it would likely force us to favour the later, Old Babylonian, period. “Professionals” in this context
refers to qualified scholars with extensive theoretical and practical experience, without reference toemployment or formal credentials.)
Beginning with an earlier period aids in the identification of splits and reduces the potential of having todisunify many characters at a subsequent stage. In addition, from a representational point of view, if theglyphs chosen for each character are taken from an earlier and more complete repertoire, we ensure more
complete pre-merger differentiation in the Unicode glyph table and a minimum of “odd-ball” glyphs.
These, typically, will represent additions from the later periods. The inconvenience of underdifferentiation of glyphs is much lesser with Ur III or Old Babylonian than if a late period standard suchas Neo-Assyrian were chosen, given the high shrinkage of the sign repertoire from early to late periods(there being ca. 900 signs in the Ur III/Old Babylonian period, compared with just 600 in the NeoAssyrian period, and less than 400 in Hittite).
Looking to the future, Stage Two would provisionally encapsulate the Old Akkadian period, while Stage
Three would involve treatment of the Archaic Period, should it be decided to unify that as well.
Although we have used the term “period” throughout this section, it is implicit that all languages whichwere clients of the script during those periods should be considered in the event that one or more of theseshould show peculiarities not evident from the core (Sumero-Akkadian, or mainstream Mesopotamian)
tradition.
Questions (2) and (3) should be treated together:
2.

“How will we treat compound signs, i.e. character sequences made up of two or more signs
written one after the other but treated as one grapheme?”

3.

“How will we treat complex signs, i.e. signs made up of two or more signs written inside one
another and treated as one grapheme?”

The first question is not well-phrased. It should have been put as follows: “How will we treat compoundsigns, i.e. linear sequences of two or more signs or wedge-clusters generally treated as a unit?”
Similarly, the second question is better phrased as “How will we treat complex signs, i.e. signs made up
of a primary sign with one of more secondary signs written within it or in such proximity to it that thewhole is generally treated as a unit?”
The decision reached at ICE1 on these matters was that complex signs (or “inscribed signs”, as they aresometimes called) would be encoded as single characters, notwithstanding the possibility of identifying
the individual sign elements making up the composition of the glyph, while sequential compounds would
be encoded as a sequence of characters, one per constituent element in the sequence. (Although signs
which are both compound and complex were not specifically addressed by an ICE1 resolution, theirtreatment follows in general completely naturally from the other two resolutions.)
No new evidence has to our knowledge been brought forward since ICE1 to require a re-evaluation ofthese issues, though one clarification should be made. Since the identity of signs as characters within thesystem is frequently possible only by means of diachronic study of script development in the matter of
those signs, it will be necessary, on a sign-by-sign basis, to examine the diachronic development of thesign. Thus, when a sign appears as an (inscribed) complex sign in one place, but as a sequential
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compound in another, the sign ought to be encoded as a character sequence; its complex representation
could be realized as a ligature via a ZERO-WIDTH JOINER mechanism. The rendering engine will have toresolve such sequences into the appropriate glyph where necessary.
It is unlikely that further round-table discussion of this issue will achieve much in the way of additional
encoding principles. In general, we believe it is best to determine whether signs are complex orsequential compounds on an individual basis in light of their etymology, with the proviso that one beflexible, since the actual data, rather than some preconceived set of general principles, should inform thedecision.
4.

“How do we encode gunu signs, i.e. signs with added ‘flourishes’?”Gunû refers to a cluster of additional wedges, similar to “hashing”, which differentiate certain signs fromotherwise identical signs. In general, one may think of the sign without gunû as the original or base sign,and the gunufied sign as a graphic derivative. Gunufication does not have a consistent semanticinterpretation across the set of signs to which it applies.
There are two possibilities when it comes to encoding gunufied signs: either they are simply encoded assigns in their own right, or they are encoded as their corresponding base signs with a COMBINING GUNU
modifier.
At present, we are of the opinion that it may be best to choose the former approach, and to avoid the useof COMBINING GUNU. However, the latter approach may have some practical benefits in light of thetendency for scribes in certain periods to substitute base signs for gunufied forms, since this would
facilitate software searches of base signs, base signs followed by gunû, and base signs not followed bygunû. Whether such a view is justified cannot be determined, however, without direct study of therepertoire.
5.

“How do we treat diri spellings,. i.e. multiple signs treated as one?”“DIRI” writing, a term derived from the first line of the lexical series diri=SI.A-ku=wa-at-ru, refers to thewriting of logograms composed of two or more signs, whose reading or meaning cannot be inferred
directly from readings or meanings of the component parts. (Example: Akkadian puzur4 ‘concealment’ iswritten as a complex sign whose base is KA (Sumerian ‘mouth’) with inscribed ŠU (Sumerian ‘hand’)
followed by ŠA (which usually stands for the phonemic sequence /ša/.)
The fact that a single reading extends over multiple signs is an issue with respect to the treatment oftransliteration, not one for encoding. In principle, there is no reason not to treat DIRI writings in a manner
similar to sequential compounds, with one character being encoded for each constituent component.
6.

“What sequence will we impose on the signs?”

This is perhaps the last question which should be asked, once the sign repertoire and its encoding has
been established, since one or another ordering may be preferable depending upon the final character set.
Nevertheless, there is no harm in offering a perspective on this matter now.
There are several possible options. It is unlikely that one of the several familiar Neo-Assyrian wedgeorientation-based orders (e.g. Deimel, Borger Zeichenliste [1981], and Borger Mesopotamische
Zeichenliste [forthcoming]) would be suitable, since Neo-Assyrian glyphs offer insufficient coverage for
the Unicode glyph table even at Stage One of the encoding. Therefore, one will have either to find a newshape-oriented order based upon Ur III glyphs (or Old Babylonian glyphs as the case may be), or one
could opt for a different analysis altogether. Such an analysis would resemble that commonly used to3

order Han characters, whose sequence is determined by “radicals”, so that related signs would be orderednear to one another in a fashion similar to what is found in Chinese dictionaries. Using a “radical” orderinstead of a stroke order has the merit that the unification of subsequent stages won’t disrupt theorganization of the system. Other possibilities exist, but more cannot be decided until the initial character
repertoire has been established.
By this we assume that it will be preferable to have the glyphs ordered in the code charts in a harmonious
and visually-searchable presentation.
7.

“What period will we use for the representative sign glyphs?”

This question also seems somewhat premature. However, it would be most reasonable, from a coverage
point of view, to choose glyphs from an earlier, rather than later instance of the script.
Ur III represents the “crispest” sign forms: glyphs are well-formed, and documents are tidily written, sothat at this period we can come most closely to speaking of “graphemic distinction” between signs. In ourview, this is the most suitable repertoire for choosing the representative glyph set.
As noted above, there will, of course, be a small number of “odd-ball” glyphs in the code table since
there will be a certain number of late period sign additions, anomalous language-specific additions for
Indo-European, etc. But choosing early-period glyphs is much preferable to choosing a those of a later
period, which are not capable of illustrating pre-merger differentiations and which must fall short of full
representational capability by 50% or more. Additions at Stages Two (Old Akkadian) and Three(Archaic, if unified) would differ somewhat from the Ur III style, though to a lesser degree.
8.

“How will we choose sign names?”

Although the ancient scribes did leave us some lists of their names for the signs, these lists are of latedate, are incomplete, and not particularly suited to use for naming a modern encoding.
In the absence of any compelling reason to take an alternate route, we consider it best to continue toname the signs according to their main value as currently practiced in scholarship, e.g. ASH, HAL, MUG,BA, and so on, indexing the names (such as GIR2) as necessary.
9.

“What text elements will we encode? – e.g., column, case, and line dividers?”

Case division is a page layout issue paralleling modern tabulation, not a plain text encoding issue.
Column and line breaks can be implemented with line-feeds and carriage-returns as in other scripts.
10.

“How will we address numeric and metrological signs?”

Where numbers are concerned, some research needs to be done. Are the variant forms for some numbers(e.g. four, which can resemble Õ ZA or ⁄ GAR) significant or arbitrary? If significant, then multiplecharacters are called for, if not, then only one. The number set should be unified to the extent that actual
practice can be represented.
For metrology, the basic elements should be encoded to the extent they do not duplicate other characters.

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11.

“How do we deal with mergers and splits, in order to support round-tripping between
character and transliteration, for example?”

Transliteration is not a primary concern of the encoding; it is a matter of textual interpretation. We arebest advised to avoid concentrating on secondary issues such as this and remain focussed on the primary
matter before us, which is encoding.
Mergers are no problem. The glyphs for various characters (to cite our long-standing example, say MASH,BAN2 and BAR) will simply be identical in a font representing a post-merger period. In theory, the scholar
simply needs to decide what to encode; in practice, this could be handled automatically by means of asuitable input method.
Splits are no problem either. Starting from Ur III, say, it just so happens that at later points in script
development certain glyph variants take on a semantic significance of their own (e.g. TA*, which during
the Middle Assyrian period is a mere glyphic variant for TA, but which in Neo-Assyrian royal inscriptions
has an independent meaning). In the former case, the new character is encoded where the new meaning isimplied, and the pre-split character is encoded otherwise.
The creation of new characters at a later stage poses no difficulties whatsoever. They would simply haveno representation in earlier periods.
12.

“What about ruby (plain text annotation)?”Ruby exists and is available for general use. It may require special software, however, which could
complicate the rendering engine for Cuneiform as it is unlikely to be available except in software
specifically supporting Japanese typography. In this case, a viable alternative would be XML mark-up.
Encoding cuneiform means exactly that: encoding cuneiform. It does not imply plain-text-encoding theconveniences of the scholarly apparatus required for multilingual publication. There are numerous
mechanisms available to address this need (consider for example the run-of-the-mill word processor andhow it handles footnotes), which should be addressed at a later date or in a different arena, if focus is tobe maintained.
Summary statement
Most of the questions posed above were addressed over the course of ICE1, and have been discussed anumber of times since, with the general conclusions essentially unchanged.
In our opinion, further theoretical discussion of these points is unlikely to accomplish much. What isneeded at this point is 1) to collect all relevant and pertinent data; 2) to attempt the application of theseprinciples in the creation of a draft encoding proposal; and 3) to revise them as necessary in light of ourfindings.
Finally, we believe that this process is unlikely to be completed in time for a proposal to be presented toUTC at the November meeting. Instead, we suggest that we make a start by beginning research andanalysis in the areas outlined above (possibly among others) and aim to present the findings of those substudies at the November meeting.

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