Unicode cuneiform

Unicode (as of version 5.0) assigns to the Sumero-Akkadian Cuneiform script the following ranges of the Supplementary Multilingual Plane:
*U+12000 to U+1236E (879 characters) "Sumero-Akkadian Cuneiform"
*U+12400 to U+12473 (103 characters) "Cuneiform Numbers"

History

The proposal for Unicode encoding of the script had been submitted by the Initiative for Cuneiform Encoding ( [http://www.jhu.edu/ice/ ICE] ) in June 2004. [http://www.jhu.edu/digitalhammurabi/research/2004_06_04_n2786_cuneiform_unicode.pdf] The base character inventory is derived from the list of Ur III signs compiled by the Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative of UCLA based on the inventories of Miguel Civil, Rykle Borger (2003), and Robert England.

Character inventory and ordering

Of the 907 signs listed by Borger (2003), some 200 have no encoding at a single codepoint. Conversely, a number of combinations considered reducible by Borger were assigned unique codepoints. These differences are due to the difficulty of establishing what represents a single character in cuneiform, and indeed most of Borger's items not encoded have straightforward etymological decomposition. There are still quite a number of universally recognized signs missing, and criticism has been voiced to the effect that the encoding "disregards an important part of the accumulated knowledge of generations of assyriologists about what actually function as single signs in normal texts, and are reflected in the traditional sign lists, most recently and comprehensively Borger's "Mesopotamische Zeichenliste" (L. Anderson, [https://listhost.uchicago.edu/pipermail/ane/2004-June/013909.html] ). For example, NIN "lady" (in many names of goddesses such as Ninhursag, Ninlil, Ninsar, Ningal etc.; Borger 2003 nr. 887) has to be expressed as MUNUS.TÚG (cuneiform|𒊩𒌆), and MEŠ (a plural marker; Borger 2003 nr. 754) has to be expressed as ME.EŠ (cuneiform|𒈨𒌍). Another class of examples are signs that are written as ligatures of varying constituent signs, such as KURUM₇ (Borger 2003 nr. 729) that was written IGI.NÍG in early times, but later IGI.ERIM. Since there is no codepoint for KURUM₇, the sign must be expressed as either IGI.NÍG (U+12146 U+1243C, cuneiform|𒅆𒐼) or IGI.ERIM (U+12146 U+1209F, cuneiform|𒅆𒂟) depending on the glyph shape, in violation of the basic principle of Unicode to encode characters, not glyphs.While those signs can in principle still be added by a "Cuneiform Extended" range in the future, as has been done for a number of other scripts ("Latin Extended" etc.), their absence as of Unicode 5.0 means that the standard's usability for the encoding of actual texts is limited.

Rather than opting for an ordering by glyph shape and complexity, the Unicode order of glyphs is the Latin alphabet order of their 'main' Sumerian transliteration (n.b placing signs on Š-, transliterated as SH-, between SAR and SI). In most (but not all) cases, the "etymological" decomposition of originally complex signs ("ligatures") has been chosen, even if the sign's most familiar value is another. For example, U+12066 cuneiform|𒁦 "DAG KISIM5 TIMES LU PLUS MASH2" is better known as AMAŠ, U+12258 cuneiform|𒉘 "NINDA2 TIMES NE" is better known as ÁG, or "HI TIMES ASH2" cuneiform|𒄯 as ḪAR or ḪUR.

List of signs

:"See also list of cuneiform signs."

The following table allows matching of Borger's 1981 and 2003 numbering with Unicode characters (after Anderson's [http://www.cuneiformsigns.org/SignList1.htm sign list] )The "primary" transliteration column has the glyphs' Sumerian values as given by the official glyph name. The official names can be unambiguously recovered by prefixing, "CUNEIFORM [NUMERIC] SIGN", replacing "TIMES" for "x", "PLUS" for "+" and "OVER" for "/", "ASTERISK" for "*", "H" for "Ḫ", "SH" for "Š", and switching to uppercase.

umero-Akkadian Cuneiform

Cuneiform Numerals

Charts

References

*Rylke Borger, "Assyrisch-Babylonische Zeichenliste", 2nd ed., Neukirchen-Vluyn (1981)
*Rylke Borger, "Mesopotamisches Zeichenlexikon", Münster (2003). [http://www.jhu.edu/ice/BorgerMZ/BorgerMZ.html]
*Michael Everson, Karljürgen Feuerherm, Steve Tinney, [http://www.dkuug.dk/jtc1/sc2/wg2/docs/n2786.pdf "Final proposal to encode the Cuneiform script in the SMP of the UCS"] , ISO/IEC JTC1/SC2/WG2 N2786 (2004).

ee also

*List of cuneiform signs

External links

* [http://www.cuneiformsigns.org/ cuneiformsigns.org] by Lloyd Anderson

Font packages

* [http://users.teilar.gr/~g1951d/download.html Akkadian] (reproduces the Sumerian (3rd millennium BC) glyphs given in the Unicode ( [http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U12000.pdf reference chart] ), by [http://users.teilar.gr/~g1951d/ George Douros] .
*de icon [http://flaez.ch/freeidg.html FreeIdgSerif] (branched off FreeSerif), encodes some 390 Old Assyrian (2nd millennium BC) glyphs used in Hittite cuneiform.