User:Dbachmann/cuneiform
In 2004, the Initiative for Cuneiform Encoding (ICE), consisting of Michael Everson (font specialist, co-author of Unicode standard, Dublin), Karljürgen Feuerherm (computer scientist and student of Akkadian, Toronto) and Steve Tinney (Assyriologist, University of Pennsylvania) submitted their final proposal to the Unicode consortium. They used the signs of Tinney's "Classic cuneiform" font as reference glyphs. Though the glyphs are mainly Ur III, some codepoint numbers have been assigned to Hittite/Hurrite signs, to a few Neo-Assyrian Signs and even to one Elamite sign. It was published as N2786: "Final proposal to encode the cuneiform script"[1].
In 2006 the Unicode Consortium canonized the final proposal in the Unicode ranges "Sumero-Akkadian Cuneiform" and "Cuneiform Numbers" in The Unicode Standard, Version 5.0 (ISBN 0-321-48091-0).
The ICE font architects, however, managed to overlook the pertinent possibilities offered by Borger's 2003 Mesopotamisches Zeichenlexikon (MesZL). The "final proposal" should have been extended by several hundreds of codepoints before being offered for "canonization". As it is, and pending an extension of the standard in a future version of Unicode, all users of Unicode conform cuneiform fonts and all font designers will have to cope with many missing codepoints.
In the Unicode Standard the characters are transliterated into, and arranged according to our Latin alphabet. Normally cuneiformists use a "conventional reading" for every sign, as indicated e.g. in chapter II of MesZL. The Unicode Standard introduces a new set of conventional readings or "character names", without offering any key or explanation (an usual practice with Unicode character code tables). In order to stimulate the intellectual activity of the users it also makes extensive use of the principle of "splittability". In Chapter II of MesZL Borger has generally registered the elements from which cuneiform signs have been put together. If e.g. a user of Unicode Standard is looking for the signs AM, UL, etc., he may find these registered as "CUNEIFORM SIGN GUD TIMES KUR", "CUNEIFORM SIGN U GUD", etc. That, of course, is not common knowledge, and the user must consult Chapter II of MesZL, where he will find the analysis of AM sub no. 309; the quite senseless analysis of UL, however, is missing here, so he must go on and consult Y. Gong, Die Namen der Keilschriftzeichen pp. 196 and 189f. In many cases the user must write a cuneiform sign by combining two or three Unicode characters, and he must find out the codepoints of these shorter signs himself. Some signs are splittable in the third millennium but not in other periods; so they should have got codepoints of their own.
The following list maps the Unicode 5.0 standard such as it is to the corresponding MesZL signs. Conversely, the list of cuneiform signs as far as possible matches MesZL signs to their Unicode characters. It is based on a list compiled by D. Bachmann in 2006, thoroughly revised by M. Studt, supported by Borger's notes.