February 3, 2024 • 31 mins
Enrique introduces us to a major new resource in digital assyriology: The electronic Babylonian Library. What does it offer and what are its aims? He discusses the issues facing the field and the potential of digital tools, including AI, to help solve them. To what extent can Babylonian literature be reconstructed now, and what we can do with it?
2:08 what is the eBL?
4:59 how much Babylonian literature do we have?
6:16 the non-literary fragments
10:27 why launch now?
11:50 what's the reaction / impact?
15:05 what's the significance of eBL for your research on literature?
18:14 what happens to eBL when the project funding ends?
19:11 how does eBL relate to other digital resources?
22:02 impact of AI
23:56 long term goals
eBL website
Enrique's university page
Enrique's Academia page
Music by Ruba Hillawi
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Jon Taylor (00:13):
Hello, and welcome to the Thin End of the wedge.
The podcast where experts fromaround the world share new and
interesting stories about lifein the ancient Middle East. My
name is Jon. Each episode I talkto friends and colleagues, and
get them to explain their workin a way we can all understand.
We take digital researchresources for granted. The
(00:36):
quantity and quality of dataavailable is incredible. It's
something that 20 years ago wecould only have dreamed of. Last
year, a new platform was madepublic. I took the opportunity
to ask the person behind theeBL, the electronic Babylonian
Library, about this newresource. What does the eBL
(00:58):
offer? How does it help us? Whatare the project's goals? And
what progress has been made sofar? And of course, with an ever
increasing number of resources,how do we make sure that more is
better, rather than somethingthat makes us look in too many
places, only to find divergentversions of the information we
(01:18):
need?
So get yourself a cup of tea,make yourself comfortable, and
let's meet today's guest.
Hello, and welcome to Thin Endof the Wedge. Thank you for
joining us. Could you tell usplease: who are you, and what do
(01:41):
you do?
Enrique Jiménez (01:42):
My name is Enrique Jiménez. I am an
assyriologist who works at LMUMunich. And I specialise in
literature and scholarship fromthe first millennium BC. One of
my main interests has alwaysbeen the use of technology for
studying Mesopotamian texts. Andin a way the combination of
these interests is the eBLproject. And for that reason I'm
(02:05):
very grateful for theopportunity to talk about it.
Jon Taylor (02:08):
So Enrique, you have recently launched something
called the eBL. Could you maybestart us off please by
explaining briefly what eBL is?
Enrique Jiménez (02:18):
So in ancient Mesopotamia, literature, as
opposed to the literature forGreece or for ancient Israel, is
in a state of reconstruction.
That means that we are now atthe same stage which classics
were during the Renaissance. Sothe electronic Babylonian
Library is a platform thatsupports this ongoing process of
reconstruction.
(02:41):
Now, how does it do it? So firstof all, it provides up to date
editions of many literary texts,of all classics from the first
millennium BC, which areinformed by the latest
discoveries, and are permanentlyupdated to reflect the current
state of knowledge. Andsecondly, it provides a large
(03:01):
collection of fragments, aso-called Fragmentarium, which
at the moment has around 350,000lines of text. In this
Fragmentarium, you will findphotographs of thousands of
tablets, and editions of around23,000 tablets at the moment.
It's very important that thetablets are edited, so that you
can actually find them. And theeditions are also fully
(03:24):
annotated with lemmatisationsand so on. Then, the idea of the
project is an algorithm comparesthe editions in the
Fragmentarium with the corpusand tries to find matches, so
that the fragments areautomatically identified and
then the corpus of texts growseven further. The algorithm is
already developed, but can onlybe used by expert users. And we
(03:47):
are currently working on makingit available for all users.
Apart from these two corecomponents, the corpus and the
Fragmentarium, there are severalother components, the goal of
which is also to help with thisprocess of reconstruction of
Mesopotamian literature, andmore in general to help you with
tablets. So on the one hand, wehave a complete Akkadian
(04:09):
dictionary, which is searchablein many different ways. And it
includes a complete Arabictranslation. So it's an
Akkadian-English, but alsoAkkadian-Arabic dictionary. And
then we also have a sign list,which has the complete version
of the standard sign list, andadditional tools, like snippets
of signs, and so on and soforth. The dictionary and the
(04:32):
sign list are meant to bereference tools, so they're
highly searchable. You can find,for instance, in the dictionary
roots that begin with aparticular letter and then
followed by a wildcard, at theend another letter. So they are
reference tools, but they'realso meant to be research tools.
(04:53):
So that you find the manybibliographical references and
things like that that will helpyou with your research.
Jon Taylor (04:59):
Okay, so in terms of progress, then, you say got tens
of thousands of fragments, andyou have hundreds of thousands
of lines of text. What does thattranslate into? How much
Babylonian literature do wehave?
Enrique Jiménez (05:12):
So the corpus of Babylonian literature
includes something like 10,000lines. So it's a comparatively
small corpus, especially if youcompare with other corpora. For
instance, the Iliad alone hasaround 20,000 lines. It's a
corpus that makes sensetogether, in the sense that
texts sometimes refer to eachother. The texts were copied in
(05:33):
particular cities by particularpeople. So people who copied one
text knew about the other texts,and so on. So it makes sense to
reconstruct them all at the sametime, because you gain knowledge
from all of them while you doso. And how much of it is on the
eBL? We have at the moment, whatis traditionally considered the
(05:53):
literature. So texts that don'thave a purpose that is
immediately clear, so texts thatare not magic, or divination,
and so on. So literature in avery strict sense. So we have at
the moment in the corpus. Butthe fragmentary includes all
sorts of possible fragments,even really many administrative
documents, thousands ofdivinatory fragments, and so on
(06:15):
and so forth.
Jon Taylor (06:16):
Okay, I might resist the urge to ask what you're
going to do with those for thetime being. Alright.
Enrique Jiménez (06:22):
I wanted to say something about it as well,
yeah.
Jon Taylor (06:24):
Okay. What then do you plan to do with the various
fragments that are not strictlyliterary that you have within
the eBL?
Enrique Jiménez (06:32):
I wanted to say also that we have a problem in
the field. We have a disease inthe field. We excavated many
more tablets than we couldpossibly publish. And the
tablets that we excavated in the19th century, and at the
beginning of the 20th century,they're still very far from
published. Strassmaier, who wasan assyriologist from the second
half of the 19th century, he isquoted as saying, "How could you
(06:55):
possibly write a history ofancient Mesopotamia, if there
are still tens of thousands offragments that are unpublished?"
He said that at the end of the19th century, and that is still
the case. It is still a problem.
So in the largest collections oftablets, like the British
Museum, the Iraq Museum, theVorderasiatisches Museum in
Berlin, as a rule, less thanhalf of the collection is
(07:16):
published, because there'ssimply too much to do. It's a
very time-consuming process. Andthere are not enough
assyriologists. So we are tryingto tackle this problem in new
ways. We are exploring new waysof dealing with this problem, of
the fact that we have excavatedfar too many tablets.
Jon Taylor (07:37):
I think the problem is rather that we don't have
enough assyriologists. Slightlydifferent problem.
Enrique Jiménez (07:43):
Yeah, that's possible. Yeah. But I think the
problem that we also have simplytoo many tablets is ... it's
true. When we started doingthis, everyone thought that it
was a very good idea. And we gota very warm reception from the
beginning. So the mostimportantly, we got a very warm
reception from the BritishMuseum, which has allowed and
(08:05):
supported the photographyproject in a really exemplary
way. And the field this veryfortunate that the museum that
has the largest collection oftablets in the world, is also
the most open one. It's a greatfortune for the field.
But on the other hand, apartfrom the museum, we were also
supported by many, manycolleagues, who thought that
what we are doing is somethingthat is necessary. So we got
(08:27):
donations of collections oftransliterations from many
assyriologists. We got bothcollections from assyriologists
of the past. And thesecollections were donated by the
academic executors. But we alsogot many collections of
transliterations from livingscholars, who have been going to
the museum regularly overdecades and produced massive
(08:49):
collections of notebookscompletely full of
transliterations. And they havedonated them, so that we can
include them in theFragmentarium. Among them, we
have Werner Mayer, Simo Parpola,Andrew George, Ulla Koch,
Jeremiah Peterson and UriGabbay. They have all donated to
us the large collections oftransliterations, which have
(09:10):
been very useful for compilingthe Fragmentarium. So we were
never alone in this project.
Everyone saw that it was reallysomething that is needed. There
are lots of people who havecontributed to it.
So the collaboration was verynecessary at the beginning to
compile the Fragmentarium, butit's still very necessary.
Almost from the beginning of theproject, we could collaborate
(09:31):
with a project that is stillongoing in Geneva, directed by
Catherine Mittermeier, whosegoal is to produce an edition of
part of Shumma Alu, a largeseries of terrestrial omens. I
think the collaborationbenefited both parts. Because we
have obtained very manytransliterations. And they have
found hundreds of joins in theseries. My idea is that this is
(09:56):
something that other groups willcontinue to do in the future.
There is still an almostdesperate need for modern
editions, especially ofdivinatory texts. There are many
texts that have never beenedited, especially of extispicy.
They need to be edited in moderneditions, in searchable
editions. The hope is that othergroups will start to work in the
(10:18):
same way as the people fromGeneva and use the Fragmentarium
as a quarry to get the fragmentsthat they need for
reconstructing the texts.
Jon Taylor (10:27):
Okay, well, that's a very good segue to the next
question, which is, you've beenworking on this for a couple of
years, and you still have alittle bit of time to go before
the project officially finishes.
Why did you choose this point acouple of months ago to do the
public launch?
Enrique Jiménez (10:42):
It's a very good question. On the one hand,
development took a long time,because we were very ambitious
and wanted to get many parts ofthe platform ready, that we were
not planning to do at thebeginning. For instance, the
signs, or the dictionary. Sothat meant that the development
took a bit longer thananticipated. But in February, we
were basically done with thedevelopment in the sense that it
(11:04):
was safe to open the platform tolarge amounts of people. I mean
again it's a large amount ofpeople in an assyriogical way. A
small amount of people. But youcannot really predict how many
uses you're going to have. Sothe platform has to be robust
and stable. So on the one hand,that. On the other hand, we
wanted to finish the edition ofseveral literary texts before we
(11:25):
made it public. Mostimportantly, Gilgamesh, which is
the largest text, it has reallymany versions, and it was a
challenge to get it finished ontime. Before the launch, we had
opened the platform. So we hadcreated accounts for around 200
scholars around the world. Sothere were very many people who
are using the Fragmentarium, forfinding fragments or for finding
(11:47):
joins, or for working on thereconstruction of texts.
Jon Taylor (11:50):
Okay, so what has the response been to the public
launch? And how have colleaguesresponded to it? And what kind
of engagement? What's theimpact? Have you noticed
anything so far?
Enrique Jiménez (12:03):
The field is now much bigger from all the
fragments that we have publishedand included in the platform. So
in total, we will have probablysomething like 15,000 new
photos, and most of them werepreviously ... well the photos
were previously not accessible.
Also the transliterations of allthe texts were also previously
not accessible. So it's a hugetext edition, so to say, for the
field. And there's been manyreactions. The ones that are
(12:27):
most satisfying are those fromstudents, who are working on
their dissertations or on themaster thesis. And they are able
to use the Fragmentarium to findtheir own fragments. That's very
rewarding, because it means thatwe have democratised the access
to material. You don't need tobe a student of an important
person in an importantinstitution in order to access
(12:47):
them. Everyone can access themfrom their own home, and find
their own material.
So that's the most satisfactoryreaction that we get, is from
students. Before would write usto ask for an account. And now
they will tell us "Oh, I foundthis join here", or "I
identified this fragment". Andso on. On the other hand, we
(13:09):
also got emails from colleagueswho want to start projects based
on the platform, which is alsovery satisfactory, because I
think that the platform that wehave, especially for the corpus,
it's very advanced, it's verysophisticated. It took a very
long time to get it right. Andit's really ready to be expanded
to all possible corpora. Sothat's very satisfactory, that
(13:30):
there are some colleagues whowant to use it for expanding to
other corpora.
Jon Taylor (13:34):
Yeah, very good. We could maybe talk about the more
popular reception of this?
There's been a certain amount ofpress attention. Can you say
something about that?
Enrique Jiménez (13:41):
Yeah, there's been a lot of press attention.
Partially because the lastcouple of years, artificial
intelligence has been all overthe newspapers. As a byproduct,
the eBL has received a lot ofattention. The press has also
reported on some of the mostspectacular discoveries that we
have found. For example, wefound in the depths of the
(14:02):
fragmentation, a new version ofthe catalogue of texts and
authors, which means that wehave found many new authors that
we didn't know before. Whichmeans that we can contextualise
a bit better Mesopotamianliterature. Or, yeah, we found
other smaller things like, forinstance, the beginning of the
Theodicy. It's a thing that Ialways wanted to read and never
could, because there was oneword missing. But we did find
(14:25):
it. So now you can read thebeginning of the Theodicy and
every other text. Well, notevery other text, but many other
texts, completely. .
Jon Taylor (14:31):
And do you want to tell us the first word?
Enrique Jiménez (14:34):
Yeah, it's ashis itpeshu. So itpeshu was
the word that was missing, veryannoyingly.
Jon Taylor (14:41):
Excellent! A quick editorial note here for
the benefit of listeners who
don't know Akkadian (14:45):
the first line of this text now translates
as "Oh wise sage, come! Let metell you something". You can
find the full translation ofthat text at the eBL website:
ebl.lmu.de.
Okay, so it's a means to an end,right? It's a tool. And you set
(15:09):
it up for a very specificpurpose. And you talked there
about some of the results youfound so far. What for you will
be the result of this? Whatdiscoveries have you made? How
will it change things for you?
Will you be able to establishBabylonian literature, you know,
within the next few years, say?
Can we move on beyond that veryfirst stage of just
reconstructing texts tosomething else?
Enrique Jiménez (15:32):
So the pace of reconstruction has increased
dramatically. As one result,that will also be a permanent
result of the project. I'mcurrently working with my
colleague and friend AnmarFadhil from the University of
Baghdad on the reconstruction ofa text, that is a hymn to
Babylon, that we have called thePraise of Babylon. With the use
of the Fragmentarium, we wereable to find 26 fragments of
(15:55):
this text. So previously, itwould have taken something like
30 or 40 years of visits to theBritish Museum ... mostly to the
British Museum ... to find somany fragments. Now, you can
just find them from your housein a couple of days. So that's
something that has changed thereconstruction; not only the
pace, but also the quality ofthe reconstruction. That you can
(16:15):
establish in a permanent way.
No-one will ever have to go tothe museum, order fragments
randomly, and dotransliterations in notebooks,
and then bring it home andcompare them with his notes.
That's ... no longer will belike that. And any text that you
want to reconstruct from now,you will be able to use these
tools to help you with it. Sothat's, I think, a very
(16:37):
important result.
Of course, we want to go beyondthe reconstruction. And the
problem that we have is more orless the same that Strassmeier
had 120 years ago--how can youwrite a history of Mesopotamia
if there's still tens ofthousands of fragments of
tablets that are not published?
That is still a problem. How canyou write anything about
(16:59):
Gilgamesh, if you know thatthere's one third of Gilgamesh
that is still missing? Well, youhave to, because you can only
interpret Gilgamesh, as long asyou establish this, that you try
to interpret the text. If youdon't try to interpret what you
have right now, then thereconstruction that you are
going to make is going to bebiased in one way or another. So
(17:20):
you have to create this interimreport as you move forward with
the reconstruction. For thefuture, I mean, the fact that
the editions are electronic isalso a huge help for the future.
So we are at the moment, forinstance, investigating the
Akkadian meter with the help ofcomputers, which is something
(17:40):
that you couldn't do before. Wewould also like to investigate
the Akkadian morphology with thehelp of computers. So anyone who
has worked on literature fromthe first millennium knows that
the ending of words are hardlyever one expects. Where one
would expect a nominative, onefinds an accusative, and so on
and so forth. We want to see ifwe find any patterns from these
(18:03):
irregularities. So we findregularities in the system. So
that will also be a by-productof the fact that we have now
digital editions.
Jon Taylor (18:14):
Alright, well, can we move on then to the future
and the longer term questions?
How long do you have left on theproject?
Enrique Jiménez (18:21):
So we have now around one year left, and we
have applied for anotherextension. So we may have still
two years to go.
Jon Taylor (18:29):
Okay, and then what happens next then? How long will
eBL be available for colleagues?
Enrique Jiménez (18:35):
So the future of eBL, of the eBL platform, is
secure now, because we obtainedfunding from the Bavarian
Academy of Sciences for aproject called Cuneiform
Artifacts from Iraq in Context,whose goal is to edit the
cuneiform texts from the IraqMuseum and to develop the eBL
platform further. Especially theparts regarding the
(18:58):
archaeological information. Andthat's a project for 25 years.
These academy projects in theGerman system are very long
time. So it's the perfectframework for developing these
further.
Jon Taylor (19:11):
EBL, I guess, is already established as one of
the big players in digitalassyriology. And the online
resources that we increasinglyuse to do our work. How does eBL
fit in with some of the olderresources in the field, say
like, Oracc or CDLI orsomething? How interoperable are
you? How many times are weentering data? Or how many
(19:34):
places do we need to look forsomething?
Enrique Jiménez (19:37):
Yeah, so the idea is that you will only have
to enter data once. And weimplemented in such a way that
it's exportable and importable.
So you will enter the editionsin the eBL, then download them,
and upload them into Oracc orinto CDLI. And vice versa, you
can take editions from Oracc orCDLI and import them into the
eBL. We have an ongoingcollaboration with both Oracc,
(19:58):
which was really a pioneer onthe digital edition of cuneiform
texts. And also CDLI, which wasalso the pioneering platform for
collecting catalogue data aboutall tablets in the world. We
also have collaborationagreements in the framework of
the Akadamie project withArchibab, which is devoted to
Old Babylonian texts, and withBDTNS, which is devoted to Ur
(20:21):
III texts. So we haveestablished ongoing
collaborations with all theother major digital platforms.
The idea at the moment,assyriology is very insular, you
have a platform that does thisand another platform that does
that. Hopefully, in the futurewe will evolve to a system, even
(20:43):
though the platforms may remainindependent, you will be able to
search across platforms forlemmata or signs or things like
that.
Jon Taylor (20:57):
Is that what the future looks like, then? You
have individual repositoriescurated by domain experts, but
somehow it connects together,and there's a single interface
that you can access themthrough?
Enrique Jiménez (21:09):
I think that will be the ideal feature,
right? It makes a lot of senseto produce digital editions.
They are much more searchablethan traditional editions. It's
much easier to correct them thantraditional editions. And for a
corpus that is growing, it makesa lot of sense to have digital
editions. But there is no-onewho is an expert on all periods.
(21:30):
So it would make sense that thatis how the future is. There'll
be a platform where you're ableto search through all the other
various platforms. But theindividual periods or genres are
curated by experts whospecialise in that particular
field or genre.
Jon Taylor (21:46):
How far away is that?
Enrique Jiménez (21:48):
So we were hoping to do that within the
Akademie project. So it willhappen at some point of the next
25 years.
Jon Taylor (21:55):
Okay. {LAUGHS} There are different ways of looking at
that. That's not too far away,is it?
Enrique Jiménez (22:00):
{LAUGHS}
Jon Taylor (22:02):
We've coped with worse. Alright, given your
engagement with AI, presumablyyou have a fairly positive
feeling about it. What do youthink of the concerns about AI
ethically, in terms of potentialimpact on the field? I guess at
the most basic level, if someonehears about this kind of work,
(22:23):
will computers replace us? Orwill it change the way we work?
Or the kinds of questions we canask? What actually will be the
impact of AI, do you think?
Enrique Jiménez (22:33):
I think it will definitely change the way that
we work. I tend to think that ifsomething can be automatised,
and it is our duty to automatiseit. Because otherwise it means
that we are wasting our time.
And once we can automatise manyof the things that we do, we
will have time to do otherthings that at the moment we
don't have time for doing. Like,for instance, writing a
(22:53):
comprehensive history ofAkkadian literature. It's very
difficult to do at the moment,because of how demanding the
reconstruction process is. Youhardly ever have time for
anything else, but that will besomething that you will be able
to do in the future.
(23:13):
Or exploring in a holistic wayBabylonian literature is
something that I would also findvery interesting. To see how
texts talk to each other; howpeople who read those texts, or
copied those texts, what theyknew of the other texts; how
texts were transmitted. I thinkthat sort of questions, which
(23:34):
are very difficult to ask rightnow, except for very individual
tablets or texts, it will bepossible in the future to
approach things in a moreholistic way and take into
account the entire Mesopotamiandocumentation. Because
hopefully, the more menialtasks, the more the tasks that
can be automatised, will by thenhave been automatised.
Jon Taylor (23:56):
Hmm. It would be quite a change. Turning to the
future, then, you know, you havethe technical maintenance of the
website is assured; it will bepreserved for as long as we're
likely to need it. I guess youhave the manpower somehow to
update it. What's next, then?
What are the longer term hopes?
You know, before too long, youwill have established as much of
(24:17):
the literature as you can andyou will have started to analyse
it in various ways. Whatactually in the longer term do
you want to do with this mass ofmaterial?
Enrique Jiménez (24:25):
So first of all, we want to increase it and
increase on the one hand thecorpus, as I said. We want to
include standard editions of alltexts that were current, at
least in the first millenniumBC. Hopefully also in the other
periods. Editions that areconstantly updated, everyone can
(24:45):
trust. And you can go there andsee what the latest time of the
text is. We would like to havethat not only for literature, as
is the case at the moment, butalso for all of the genres.
There is a project now as Imentioned that is doing
additions of Shumma Alu. Thereis a project at the British
Museum that is doing editions ofthe therapeutic texts, but there
(25:08):
are many other genres of textsthat need modern editions. We
would also like to house themand to contribute to them with
the fragments that are in theFragmentarium at the moment
waiting to be identified.
What we would also like to do isto increase the Fragmentarium,
the coverage of theFragmentarium. At the moment we
(25:29):
have 250,000 records, but thereare many more tablets in the
world. At the moment, we areworking towards improving
coverage of other collections,and so on, but also improving
coverage of secondarybibliography, so that you will
also have a tool there, thattells you who has set what about
which tablet. We are alsostarting to digitise other
(25:51):
collections. We starteddigitising the Hilprecht
collection in Jena. And we alsostarted digitising parts of the
University Museum collection inPhiladelphia. That's in the last
few months.
What I would like to do, thedirection that I will also like
to go in the future, is alsoimplementing more artificial
intelligence approaches. Withvery practical purposes. What
(26:16):
we're doing at the moment, whatwe are putting a lot of effort
into is the signs. In our field,we don't have a systematic
modern palaeography. The lastone who tried to do that was
Fossey in the 1920s. And that isvery outdated, of course. We
would like to include that inthe sign list. At the moment, we
(26:36):
have taggings of 20,000 signs,which is a very large
collection. But it can be madebigger relatively quickly with
the tools that we haveimplemented. And then the
problem will no longer be thatwe don't have a big enough
collection, but quite theopposite, that the collection is
too large. So we would like toimplement tools so that the
computer can analyse these signforms, and sort of abstract the
(26:59):
sign forms that are common toseveral of the instances.
And in the long run, the ideawill be that the computer will
also be able to provide a datefor tablets that are undated.
Especially for literature, thatwill be a small revolution.
Because unless you have acolophon, it's nearly impossible
to date a tablet. Even broadly.
You may be able to date thisfrom the first half of this
(27:23):
millennium or from the secondhalf of this millennium. But
it's almost impossible to sayanything more accurate than
that. What we're thinking ofdoing is to use administrative
documents which are dated, andthen dated literary tablets. But
just having a large collectionof signs from all periods, that
will be very helpful.
Jon Taylor (27:42):
One day. It won't be too long. Alright, brilliant.
Well, thanks very much.
Enrique Jiménez (27:46):
Well, thank you very much for having me, Jon. I
would like to say as aconclusion that the eBL is open
to collaborations with othercuneiformists. We have several
collaborations going on orplanned. But there are still
many texts to be reconstructed.
Since we have already developedall the tools that we need to
reconstruct and to displaytexts, I think we're really in a
(28:07):
unique position to advance thereconstruction in a very
significant manner. So I wouldlike to invite anyone who is
working on a particular text ona particular group of texts to
contact us and explore possiblecollaborations. We will soon
also offer demo and supportsessions through Zoom that will
(28:28):
be open to everyone. So thiswill be also an opportunity to
explore possible ways of workingtogether. Thank you very much,
Jon.
Jon Taylor (28:38):
I’d also like to thank our patrons
Matuszak, Nancy Highcock, Jay C,Rune Rattenborg, Woodthrush,
Elisa Rossberger, Mark Weeden,Jordi Mon Companys, Thomas
Bolin, Joan Porter MacIver, JohnMacGinnis, Andrew George, Yelena
(29:00):
Rakic, Zach Rubin, SabinaFranke, Shai Gordin, Aaron
Macks, Maarja Seire, JaafarJotheri, Morgan Hite, Chikako
Watanabe, Mark McElwaine,Jonathan Blanchard Smith,
Kliment Ohr, ChristinaTsouparopoulou, TT, Melanie
(29:23):
Gross, Claire Weir, MarcVeldman, Bruno Biermann, Faimon
Roberts, Jason Moser, PavlaRosenstein, Müge
Durusu-Tanrıöver, Tate Paulette,Willis Monroe, Toby Wickenden,
Emmert Clevenstine, BarbaraPorter, Cheryl Morgan, Kevin Roy
(29:45):
Jackson, Susannah Paulus, aswell as those who prefer to
remain anonymous.
I really appreciate yoursupport. It makes a big
difference. Every penny receivedhas contributed towards
translations. Thanks of courseto the lovely people who have
worked on the translations on avoluntary basis or for well
(30:06):
below the market rate. ForArabic, thanks in particular to
Zainab Mizyidawi, as well asLina Meerchyad and May Al-Aseel.
For Turkish, thank you to PinarDurgun and Nesrin Akan. TEW is
still young, but I want to reacha sustainable level, where
translators are given propercompensation for their hard
(30:28):
work.
And thank you for listening toThin End of the Wedge. If you
enjoy what we do, and you wouldlike to help make these podcasts
available in Middle Easternlanguages, please consider
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you’ll join us next time.
Hello, and welcome to the Thin End of the wedge.
The podcast where experts fromaround the world share new and
interesting stories about lifein the ancient Middle East. My
name is Jon. Each episode I talkto friends and colleagues, and
get them to explain their workin a way we can all understand.
We take digital researchresources for granted. The
(00:36):
quantity and quality of dataavailable is incredible. It's
something that 20 years ago wecould only have dreamed of. Last
year, a new platform was madepublic. I took the opportunity
to ask the person behind theeBL, the electronic Babylonian
Library, about this newresource. What does the eBL
(00:58):
offer? How does it help us? Whatare the project's goals? And
what progress has been made sofar? And of course, with an ever
increasing number of resources,how do we make sure that more is
better, rather than somethingthat makes us look in too many
places, only to find divergentversions of the information we
(01:18):
need?
So get yourself a cup of tea,make yourself comfortable, and
let's meet today's guest.
Hello, and welcome to Thin Endof the Wedge. Thank you for
joining us. Could you tell usplease: who are you, and what do
(01:41):
you do?
Enrique Jiménez (01:42):
My name is Enrique Jiménez. I am an
assyriologist who works at LMUMunich. And I specialise in
literature and scholarship fromthe first millennium BC. One of
my main interests has alwaysbeen the use of technology for
studying Mesopotamian texts. Andin a way the combination of
these interests is the eBLproject. And for that reason I'm
(02:05):
very grateful for theopportunity to talk about it.
Jon Taylor (02:08):
So Enrique, you have recently launched something
called the eBL. Could you maybestart us off please by
explaining briefly what eBL is?
Enrique Jiménez (02:18):
So in ancient Mesopotamia, literature, as
opposed to the literature forGreece or for ancient Israel, is
in a state of reconstruction.
That means that we are now atthe same stage which classics
were during the Renaissance. Sothe electronic Babylonian
Library is a platform thatsupports this ongoing process of
reconstruction.
(02:41):
Now, how does it do it? So firstof all, it provides up to date
editions of many literary texts,of all classics from the first
millennium BC, which areinformed by the latest
discoveries, and are permanentlyupdated to reflect the current
state of knowledge. Andsecondly, it provides a large
(03:01):
collection of fragments, aso-called Fragmentarium, which
at the moment has around 350,000lines of text. In this
Fragmentarium, you will findphotographs of thousands of
tablets, and editions of around23,000 tablets at the moment.
It's very important that thetablets are edited, so that you
can actually find them. And theeditions are also fully
(03:24):
annotated with lemmatisationsand so on. Then, the idea of the
project is an algorithm comparesthe editions in the
Fragmentarium with the corpusand tries to find matches, so
that the fragments areautomatically identified and
then the corpus of texts growseven further. The algorithm is
already developed, but can onlybe used by expert users. And we
(03:47):
are currently working on makingit available for all users.
Apart from these two corecomponents, the corpus and the
Fragmentarium, there are severalother components, the goal of
which is also to help with thisprocess of reconstruction of
Mesopotamian literature, andmore in general to help you with
tablets. So on the one hand, wehave a complete Akkadian
(04:09):
dictionary, which is searchablein many different ways. And it
includes a complete Arabictranslation. So it's an
Akkadian-English, but alsoAkkadian-Arabic dictionary. And
then we also have a sign list,which has the complete version
of the standard sign list, andadditional tools, like snippets
of signs, and so on and soforth. The dictionary and the
(04:32):
sign list are meant to bereference tools, so they're
highly searchable. You can find,for instance, in the dictionary
roots that begin with aparticular letter and then
followed by a wildcard, at theend another letter. So they are
reference tools, but they'realso meant to be research tools.
(04:53):
So that you find the manybibliographical references and
things like that that will helpyou with your research.
Jon Taylor (04:59):
Okay, so in terms of progress, then, you say got tens
of thousands of fragments, andyou have hundreds of thousands
of lines of text. What does thattranslate into? How much
Babylonian literature do wehave?
Enrique Jiménez (05:12):
So the corpus of Babylonian literature
includes something like 10,000lines. So it's a comparatively
small corpus, especially if youcompare with other corpora. For
instance, the Iliad alone hasaround 20,000 lines. It's a
corpus that makes sensetogether, in the sense that
texts sometimes refer to eachother. The texts were copied in
(05:33):
particular cities by particularpeople. So people who copied one
text knew about the other texts,and so on. So it makes sense to
reconstruct them all at the sametime, because you gain knowledge
from all of them while you doso. And how much of it is on the
eBL? We have at the moment, whatis traditionally considered the
(05:53):
literature. So texts that don'thave a purpose that is
immediately clear, so texts thatare not magic, or divination,
and so on. So literature in avery strict sense. So we have at
the moment in the corpus. Butthe fragmentary includes all
sorts of possible fragments,even really many administrative
documents, thousands ofdivinatory fragments, and so on
(06:15):
and so forth.
Jon Taylor (06:16):
Okay, I might resist the urge to ask what you're
going to do with those for thetime being. Alright.
Enrique Jiménez (06:22):
I wanted to say something about it as well,
yeah.
Jon Taylor (06:24):
Okay. What then do you plan to do with the various
fragments that are not strictlyliterary that you have within
the eBL?
Enrique Jiménez (06:32):
I wanted to say also that we have a problem in
the field. We have a disease inthe field. We excavated many
more tablets than we couldpossibly publish. And the
tablets that we excavated in the19th century, and at the
beginning of the 20th century,they're still very far from
published. Strassmaier, who wasan assyriologist from the second
half of the 19th century, he isquoted as saying, "How could you
(06:55):
possibly write a history ofancient Mesopotamia, if there
are still tens of thousands offragments that are unpublished?"
He said that at the end of the19th century, and that is still
the case. It is still a problem.
So in the largest collections oftablets, like the British
Museum, the Iraq Museum, theVorderasiatisches Museum in
Berlin, as a rule, less thanhalf of the collection is
(07:16):
published, because there'ssimply too much to do. It's a
very time-consuming process. Andthere are not enough
assyriologists. So we are tryingto tackle this problem in new
ways. We are exploring new waysof dealing with this problem, of
the fact that we have excavatedfar too many tablets.
Jon Taylor (07:37):
I think the problem is rather that we don't have
enough assyriologists. Slightlydifferent problem.
Enrique Jiménez (07:43):
Yeah, that's possible. Yeah. But I think the
problem that we also have simplytoo many tablets is ... it's
true. When we started doingthis, everyone thought that it
was a very good idea. And we gota very warm reception from the
beginning. So the mostimportantly, we got a very warm
reception from the BritishMuseum, which has allowed and
(08:05):
supported the photographyproject in a really exemplary
way. And the field this veryfortunate that the museum that
has the largest collection oftablets in the world, is also
the most open one. It's a greatfortune for the field.
But on the other hand, apartfrom the museum, we were also
supported by many, manycolleagues, who thought that
what we are doing is somethingthat is necessary. So we got
(08:27):
donations of collections oftransliterations from many
assyriologists. We got bothcollections from assyriologists
of the past. And thesecollections were donated by the
academic executors. But we alsogot many collections of
transliterations from livingscholars, who have been going to
the museum regularly overdecades and produced massive
(08:49):
collections of notebookscompletely full of
transliterations. And they havedonated them, so that we can
include them in theFragmentarium. Among them, we
have Werner Mayer, Simo Parpola,Andrew George, Ulla Koch,
Jeremiah Peterson and UriGabbay. They have all donated to
us the large collections oftransliterations, which have
(09:10):
been very useful for compilingthe Fragmentarium. So we were
never alone in this project.
Everyone saw that it was reallysomething that is needed. There
are lots of people who havecontributed to it.
So the collaboration was verynecessary at the beginning to
compile the Fragmentarium, butit's still very necessary.
Almost from the beginning of theproject, we could collaborate
(09:31):
with a project that is stillongoing in Geneva, directed by
Catherine Mittermeier, whosegoal is to produce an edition of
part of Shumma Alu, a largeseries of terrestrial omens. I
think the collaborationbenefited both parts. Because we
have obtained very manytransliterations. And they have
found hundreds of joins in theseries. My idea is that this is
(09:56):
something that other groups willcontinue to do in the future.
There is still an almostdesperate need for modern
editions, especially ofdivinatory texts. There are many
texts that have never beenedited, especially of extispicy.
They need to be edited in moderneditions, in searchable
editions. The hope is that othergroups will start to work in the
(10:18):
same way as the people fromGeneva and use the Fragmentarium
as a quarry to get the fragmentsthat they need for
reconstructing the texts.
Jon Taylor (10:27):
Okay, well, that's a very good segue to the next
question, which is, you've beenworking on this for a couple of
years, and you still have alittle bit of time to go before
the project officially finishes.
Why did you choose this point acouple of months ago to do the
public launch?
Enrique Jiménez (10:42):
It's a very good question. On the one hand,
development took a long time,because we were very ambitious
and wanted to get many parts ofthe platform ready, that we were
not planning to do at thebeginning. For instance, the
signs, or the dictionary. Sothat meant that the development
took a bit longer thananticipated. But in February, we
were basically done with thedevelopment in the sense that it
(11:04):
was safe to open the platform tolarge amounts of people. I mean
again it's a large amount ofpeople in an assyriogical way. A
small amount of people. But youcannot really predict how many
uses you're going to have. Sothe platform has to be robust
and stable. So on the one hand,that. On the other hand, we
wanted to finish the edition ofseveral literary texts before we
(11:25):
made it public. Mostimportantly, Gilgamesh, which is
the largest text, it has reallymany versions, and it was a
challenge to get it finished ontime. Before the launch, we had
opened the platform. So we hadcreated accounts for around 200
scholars around the world. Sothere were very many people who
are using the Fragmentarium, forfinding fragments or for finding
(11:47):
joins, or for working on thereconstruction of texts.
Jon Taylor (11:50):
Okay, so what has the response been to the public
launch? And how have colleaguesresponded to it? And what kind
of engagement? What's theimpact? Have you noticed
anything so far?
Enrique Jiménez (12:03):
The field is now much bigger from all the
fragments that we have publishedand included in the platform. So
in total, we will have probablysomething like 15,000 new
photos, and most of them werepreviously ... well the photos
were previously not accessible.
Also the transliterations of allthe texts were also previously
not accessible. So it's a hugetext edition, so to say, for the
field. And there's been manyreactions. The ones that are
(12:27):
most satisfying are those fromstudents, who are working on
their dissertations or on themaster thesis. And they are able
to use the Fragmentarium to findtheir own fragments. That's very
rewarding, because it means thatwe have democratised the access
to material. You don't need tobe a student of an important
person in an importantinstitution in order to access
(12:47):
them. Everyone can access themfrom their own home, and find
their own material.
So that's the most satisfactoryreaction that we get, is from
students. Before would write usto ask for an account. And now
they will tell us "Oh, I foundthis join here", or "I
identified this fragment". Andso on. On the other hand, we
(13:09):
also got emails from colleagueswho want to start projects based
on the platform, which is alsovery satisfactory, because I
think that the platform that wehave, especially for the corpus,
it's very advanced, it's verysophisticated. It took a very
long time to get it right. Andit's really ready to be expanded
to all possible corpora. Sothat's very satisfactory, that
(13:30):
there are some colleagues whowant to use it for expanding to
other corpora.
Jon Taylor (13:34):
Yeah, very good. We could maybe talk about the more
popular reception of this?
There's been a certain amount ofpress attention. Can you say
something about that?
Enrique Jiménez (13:41):
Yeah, there's been a lot of press attention.
Partially because the lastcouple of years, artificial
intelligence has been all overthe newspapers. As a byproduct,
the eBL has received a lot ofattention. The press has also
reported on some of the mostspectacular discoveries that we
have found. For example, wefound in the depths of the
(14:02):
fragmentation, a new version ofthe catalogue of texts and
authors, which means that wehave found many new authors that
we didn't know before. Whichmeans that we can contextualise
a bit better Mesopotamianliterature. Or, yeah, we found
other smaller things like, forinstance, the beginning of the
Theodicy. It's a thing that Ialways wanted to read and never
could, because there was oneword missing. But we did find
(14:25):
it. So now you can read thebeginning of the Theodicy and
every other text. Well, notevery other text, but many other
texts, completely. .
Jon Taylor (14:31):
And do you want to tell us the first word?
Enrique Jiménez (14:34):
Yeah, it's ashis itpeshu. So itpeshu was
the word that was missing, veryannoyingly.
Jon Taylor (14:41):
Excellent! A quick editorial note here for
the benefit of listeners who
don't know Akkadian (14:45):
the first line of this text now translates
as "Oh wise sage, come! Let metell you something". You can
find the full translation ofthat text at the eBL website:
ebl.lmu.de.
Okay, so it's a means to an end,right? It's a tool. And you set
(15:09):
it up for a very specificpurpose. And you talked there
about some of the results youfound so far. What for you will
be the result of this? Whatdiscoveries have you made? How
will it change things for you?
Will you be able to establishBabylonian literature, you know,
within the next few years, say?
Can we move on beyond that veryfirst stage of just
reconstructing texts tosomething else?
Enrique Jiménez (15:32):
So the pace of reconstruction has increased
dramatically. As one result,that will also be a permanent
result of the project. I'mcurrently working with my
colleague and friend AnmarFadhil from the University of
Baghdad on the reconstruction ofa text, that is a hymn to
Babylon, that we have called thePraise of Babylon. With the use
of the Fragmentarium, we wereable to find 26 fragments of
(15:55):
this text. So previously, itwould have taken something like
30 or 40 years of visits to theBritish Museum ... mostly to the
British Museum ... to find somany fragments. Now, you can
just find them from your housein a couple of days. So that's
something that has changed thereconstruction; not only the
pace, but also the quality ofthe reconstruction. That you can
(16:15):
establish in a permanent way.
No-one will ever have to go tothe museum, order fragments
randomly, and dotransliterations in notebooks,
and then bring it home andcompare them with his notes.
That's ... no longer will belike that. And any text that you
want to reconstruct from now,you will be able to use these
tools to help you with it. Sothat's, I think, a very
(16:37):
important result.
Of course, we want to go beyondthe reconstruction. And the
problem that we have is more orless the same that Strassmeier
had 120 years ago--how can youwrite a history of Mesopotamia
if there's still tens ofthousands of fragments of
tablets that are not published?
That is still a problem. How canyou write anything about
(16:59):
Gilgamesh, if you know thatthere's one third of Gilgamesh
that is still missing? Well, youhave to, because you can only
interpret Gilgamesh, as long asyou establish this, that you try
to interpret the text. If youdon't try to interpret what you
have right now, then thereconstruction that you are
going to make is going to bebiased in one way or another. So
(17:20):
you have to create this interimreport as you move forward with
the reconstruction. For thefuture, I mean, the fact that
the editions are electronic isalso a huge help for the future.
So we are at the moment, forinstance, investigating the
Akkadian meter with the help ofcomputers, which is something
(17:40):
that you couldn't do before. Wewould also like to investigate
the Akkadian morphology with thehelp of computers. So anyone who
has worked on literature fromthe first millennium knows that
the ending of words are hardlyever one expects. Where one
would expect a nominative, onefinds an accusative, and so on
and so forth. We want to see ifwe find any patterns from these
(18:03):
irregularities. So we findregularities in the system. So
that will also be a by-productof the fact that we have now
digital editions.
Jon Taylor (18:14):
Alright, well, can we move on then to the future
and the longer term questions?
How long do you have left on theproject?
Enrique Jiménez (18:21):
So we have now around one year left, and we
have applied for anotherextension. So we may have still
two years to go.
Jon Taylor (18:29):
Okay, and then what happens next then? How long will
eBL be available for colleagues?
Enrique Jiménez (18:35):
So the future of eBL, of the eBL platform, is
secure now, because we obtainedfunding from the Bavarian
Academy of Sciences for aproject called Cuneiform
Artifacts from Iraq in Context,whose goal is to edit the
cuneiform texts from the IraqMuseum and to develop the eBL
platform further. Especially theparts regarding the
(18:58):
archaeological information. Andthat's a project for 25 years.
These academy projects in theGerman system are very long
time. So it's the perfectframework for developing these
further.
Jon Taylor (19:11):
EBL, I guess, is already established as one of
the big players in digitalassyriology. And the online
resources that we increasinglyuse to do our work. How does eBL
fit in with some of the olderresources in the field, say
like, Oracc or CDLI orsomething? How interoperable are
you? How many times are weentering data? Or how many
(19:34):
places do we need to look forsomething?
Enrique Jiménez (19:37):
Yeah, so the idea is that you will only have
to enter data once. And weimplemented in such a way that
it's exportable and importable.
So you will enter the editionsin the eBL, then download them,
and upload them into Oracc orinto CDLI. And vice versa, you
can take editions from Oracc orCDLI and import them into the
eBL. We have an ongoingcollaboration with both Oracc,
(19:58):
which was really a pioneer onthe digital edition of cuneiform
texts. And also CDLI, which wasalso the pioneering platform for
collecting catalogue data aboutall tablets in the world. We
also have collaborationagreements in the framework of
the Akadamie project withArchibab, which is devoted to
Old Babylonian texts, and withBDTNS, which is devoted to Ur
(20:21):
III texts. So we haveestablished ongoing
collaborations with all theother major digital platforms.
The idea at the moment,assyriology is very insular, you
have a platform that does thisand another platform that does
that. Hopefully, in the futurewe will evolve to a system, even
(20:43):
though the platforms may remainindependent, you will be able to
search across platforms forlemmata or signs or things like
that.
Jon Taylor (20:57):
Is that what the future looks like, then? You
have individual repositoriescurated by domain experts, but
somehow it connects together,and there's a single interface
that you can access themthrough?
Enrique Jiménez (21:09):
I think that will be the ideal feature,
right? It makes a lot of senseto produce digital editions.
They are much more searchablethan traditional editions. It's
much easier to correct them thantraditional editions. And for a
corpus that is growing, it makesa lot of sense to have digital
editions. But there is no-onewho is an expert on all periods.
(21:30):
So it would make sense that thatis how the future is. There'll
be a platform where you're ableto search through all the other
various platforms. But theindividual periods or genres are
curated by experts whospecialise in that particular
field or genre.
Jon Taylor (21:46):
How far away is that?
Enrique Jiménez (21:48):
So we were hoping to do that within the
Akademie project. So it willhappen at some point of the next
25 years.
Jon Taylor (21:55):
Okay. {LAUGHS} There are different ways of looking at
that. That's not too far away,is it?
Enrique Jiménez (22:00):
{LAUGHS}
Jon Taylor (22:02):
We've coped with worse. Alright, given your
engagement with AI, presumablyyou have a fairly positive
feeling about it. What do youthink of the concerns about AI
ethically, in terms of potentialimpact on the field? I guess at
the most basic level, if someonehears about this kind of work,
(22:23):
will computers replace us? Orwill it change the way we work?
Or the kinds of questions we canask? What actually will be the
impact of AI, do you think?
Enrique Jiménez (22:33):
I think it will definitely change the way that
we work. I tend to think that ifsomething can be automatised,
and it is our duty to automatiseit. Because otherwise it means
that we are wasting our time.
And once we can automatise manyof the things that we do, we
will have time to do otherthings that at the moment we
don't have time for doing. Like,for instance, writing a
(22:53):
comprehensive history ofAkkadian literature. It's very
difficult to do at the moment,because of how demanding the
reconstruction process is. Youhardly ever have time for
anything else, but that will besomething that you will be able
to do in the future.
(23:13):
Or exploring in a holistic wayBabylonian literature is
something that I would also findvery interesting. To see how
texts talk to each other; howpeople who read those texts, or
copied those texts, what theyknew of the other texts; how
texts were transmitted. I thinkthat sort of questions, which
(23:34):
are very difficult to ask rightnow, except for very individual
tablets or texts, it will bepossible in the future to
approach things in a moreholistic way and take into
account the entire Mesopotamiandocumentation. Because
hopefully, the more menialtasks, the more the tasks that
can be automatised, will by thenhave been automatised.
Jon Taylor (23:56):
Hmm. It would be quite a change. Turning to the
future, then, you know, you havethe technical maintenance of the
website is assured; it will bepreserved for as long as we're
likely to need it. I guess youhave the manpower somehow to
update it. What's next, then?
What are the longer term hopes?
You know, before too long, youwill have established as much of
(24:17):
the literature as you can andyou will have started to analyse
it in various ways. Whatactually in the longer term do
you want to do with this mass ofmaterial?
Enrique Jiménez (24:25):
So first of all, we want to increase it and
increase on the one hand thecorpus, as I said. We want to
include standard editions of alltexts that were current, at
least in the first millenniumBC. Hopefully also in the other
periods. Editions that areconstantly updated, everyone can
(24:45):
trust. And you can go there andsee what the latest time of the
text is. We would like to havethat not only for literature, as
is the case at the moment, butalso for all of the genres.
There is a project now as Imentioned that is doing
additions of Shumma Alu. Thereis a project at the British
Museum that is doing editions ofthe therapeutic texts, but there
(25:08):
are many other genres of textsthat need modern editions. We
would also like to house themand to contribute to them with
the fragments that are in theFragmentarium at the moment
waiting to be identified.
What we would also like to do isto increase the Fragmentarium,
the coverage of theFragmentarium. At the moment we
(25:29):
have 250,000 records, but thereare many more tablets in the
world. At the moment, we areworking towards improving
coverage of other collections,and so on, but also improving
coverage of secondarybibliography, so that you will
also have a tool there, thattells you who has set what about
which tablet. We are alsostarting to digitise other
(25:51):
collections. We starteddigitising the Hilprecht
collection in Jena. And we alsostarted digitising parts of the
University Museum collection inPhiladelphia. That's in the last
few months.
What I would like to do, thedirection that I will also like
to go in the future, is alsoimplementing more artificial
intelligence approaches. Withvery practical purposes. What
(26:16):
we're doing at the moment, whatwe are putting a lot of effort
into is the signs. In our field,we don't have a systematic
modern palaeography. The lastone who tried to do that was
Fossey in the 1920s. And that isvery outdated, of course. We
would like to include that inthe sign list. At the moment, we
(26:36):
have taggings of 20,000 signs,which is a very large
collection. But it can be madebigger relatively quickly with
the tools that we haveimplemented. And then the
problem will no longer be thatwe don't have a big enough
collection, but quite theopposite, that the collection is
too large. So we would like toimplement tools so that the
computer can analyse these signforms, and sort of abstract the
(26:59):
sign forms that are common toseveral of the instances.
And in the long run, the ideawill be that the computer will
also be able to provide a datefor tablets that are undated.
Especially for literature, thatwill be a small revolution.
Because unless you have acolophon, it's nearly impossible
to date a tablet. Even broadly.
You may be able to date thisfrom the first half of this
(27:23):
millennium or from the secondhalf of this millennium. But
it's almost impossible to sayanything more accurate than
that. What we're thinking ofdoing is to use administrative
documents which are dated, andthen dated literary tablets. But
just having a large collectionof signs from all periods, that
will be very helpful.
Jon Taylor (27:42):
One day. It won't be too long. Alright, brilliant.
Well, thanks very much.
Enrique Jiménez (27:46):
Well, thank you very much for having me, Jon. I
would like to say as aconclusion that the eBL is open
to collaborations with othercuneiformists. We have several
collaborations going on orplanned. But there are still
many texts to be reconstructed.
Since we have already developedall the tools that we need to
reconstruct and to displaytexts, I think we're really in a
(28:07):
unique position to advance thereconstruction in a very
significant manner. So I wouldlike to invite anyone who is
working on a particular text ona particular group of texts to
contact us and explore possiblecollaborations. We will soon
also offer demo and supportsessions through Zoom that will
(28:28):
be open to everyone. So thiswill be also an opportunity to
explore possible ways of workingtogether. Thank you very much,
Jon.
Jon Taylor (28:38):
I’d also like to thank our patrons
Matuszak, Nancy Highcock, Jay C,Rune Rattenborg, Woodthrush,
Elisa Rossberger, Mark Weeden,Jordi Mon Companys, Thomas
Bolin, Joan Porter MacIver, JohnMacGinnis, Andrew George, Yelena
(29:00):
Rakic, Zach Rubin, SabinaFranke, Shai Gordin, Aaron
Macks, Maarja Seire, JaafarJotheri, Morgan Hite, Chikako
Watanabe, Mark McElwaine,Jonathan Blanchard Smith,
Kliment Ohr, ChristinaTsouparopoulou, TT, Melanie
(29:23):
Gross, Claire Weir, MarcVeldman, Bruno Biermann, Faimon
Roberts, Jason Moser, PavlaRosenstein, Müge
Durusu-Tanrıöver, Tate Paulette,Willis Monroe, Toby Wickenden,
Emmert Clevenstine, BarbaraPorter, Cheryl Morgan, Kevin Roy
(29:45):
Jackson, Susannah Paulus, aswell as those who prefer to
remain anonymous.
I really appreciate yoursupport. It makes a big
difference. Every penny receivedhas contributed towards
translations. Thanks of courseto the lovely people who have
worked on the translations on avoluntary basis or for well
(30:06):
below the market rate. ForArabic, thanks in particular to
Zainab Mizyidawi, as well asLina Meerchyad and May Al-Aseel.
For Turkish, thank you to PinarDurgun and Nesrin Akan. TEW is
still young, but I want to reacha sustainable level, where
translators are given propercompensation for their hard
(30:28):
work.
And thank you for listening toThin End of the Wedge. If you
enjoy what we do, and you wouldlike to help make these podcasts
available in Middle Easternlanguages, please consider
joining our Patreon family. Youcan find us at
patreon.com/wedgepod. You canalso support us in other ways:
(30:51):
simply subscribe to the podcast;leave us a five star review on
Apple Music or your favouritepodcatcher; recommend us to your
fri (30:58):
@wedge_pod. If you want the latest podcast news, you can
sign up for our newsletter. Youcan find all the links in the
show notes and on our website atwedgepod.org. Thanks, and I hope
you’ll join us next time.
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