Autograph (Assyriology)
Encyclopedia
An autograph in Assyriology
is the hand-copy of a cuneiform
clay-tablet. Producing an autograph is often the first step of a tablet's archaeological interpretation and the autograph is frequently the authoritative form that is published as source material. Autographing the text is followed by transliteration
, transcription
and translation
.
Assyriology
Assyriology is the archaeological, historical, and linguistic study of ancient Mesopotamia and the related cultures that used cuneiform writing. The field covers the Akkadian sister-cultures of Assyria and Babylonia, together with their cultural predecessor; Sumer...
is the hand-copy of a cuneiform
Cuneiform script
Cuneiform script )) is one of the earliest known forms of written expression. Emerging in Sumer around the 30th century BC, with predecessors reaching into the late 4th millennium , cuneiform writing began as a system of pictographs...
clay-tablet. Producing an autograph is often the first step of a tablet's archaeological interpretation and the autograph is frequently the authoritative form that is published as source material. Autographing the text is followed by transliteration
Transliteration
Transliteration is a subset of the science of hermeneutics. It is a form of translation, and is the practice of converting a text from one script into another...
, transcription
Transcription (linguistics)
Transcription in the linguistic sense is the systematic representation of language in written form. The source can either be utterances or preexisting text in another writing system, although some linguists only consider the former as transcription.Transcription should not be confused with...
and translation
Translation
Translation is the communication of the meaning of a source-language text by means of an equivalent target-language text. Whereas interpreting undoubtedly antedates writing, translation began only after the appearance of written literature; there exist partial translations of the Sumerian Epic of...
.