Rosetta project: revisiting history

(Get it? Because I'm just posting this blog now?!)

I participated in part two of the Rosetta project (unit 3 final). It was fascinating!

Here’s what we did for part two:

A few members of our group spoke to Dr. Stratford, the professor who helped the artifact’s original owners, the Mesopotamia group. They learned how to format and distinguish the Akkadian characters. They also got access to a handy translation of the text, which I got separately by contacting one of the members of the Mesopotamia group separately. (Thanks, Jared!)

Here are the phonetics for the phrase from that translation:

mu-bi-kur-rae-na-ta-ni-èna-rú-a-
a-šà-GÁ-NA-ki-sur-ra-
nin-g~ír-sú-kamu-na(Text: KI)-rú

And the translation into English:

and erected monuments for him in the fieldson the god Ning~irsu’s boundary.

This was a small excerpt from an ancient inscription, a copy of which can actually be found, Jared informed me, at the Museum of Peoples and Cultures!

I was in charge of copying the Akkadian characters onto our medium. I used Dr. Stratford’s information as my main resource, comparing the phonetics found there to those found in the chart below (from ancientscripts.com):

I chose to use this chart as my main reference for highest accuracy. I figured copying from a more “original” source, rather than the Mesopotamian group’s “copy,” which would make my finished product a “copy of a copy, “ would be better.

This chart took a little bit of research to understand. Before learning how to use it, it’s important to note that the Cs in the headers stand for consonant, and Vs in my chart stand for vowels. So here’s how to use the chart:

Chart by me

• For example: mu
• Is there a consonant in the syllable? Yes. M
• Is the consonant first or second in the phonetic syllable? First
• Find the consonant on the left-hand side. Ninth row
• Find the vowel on the top, where the consonant is first: Cu, fourth column
• Follow the row and column to find the character. 

From here, I went on to copy the phonetic syllables onto our wood medium with a specialty paint pen.

Interesting circumstances:

No chart entry! Sometimes a syllable was not represented in the chart. In these cases, I copied the character directly from the other group’s artifact.

Character size. In my first attempt, I made really large letters on our wood. They looked great, but far too geometric, and not very realistic. So my group and I ended up deciding that it would look more authentic to be smaller.

Compare this:

Four characters high

To this:

Six characters fit where only four did before

Conflicting information. Dr. Stratford taught us that the characters should be read left to right, but the Mesopotamia group’s characters were ordered from top to bottom.

Inconsistency. I found that the previous group’s characters were not always consistent. This threw me off a bit when comparing my work to theirs. For example, the syllable na was used twice, once in line 2 and once in line 3. But on the Mesopotamia group’s artifact, the two arrows in the middle point different directions. The first two (A) point down and to the right a bit, and the other two (B) point almost exactly right. I think it is safe to think that two separate group members inscribed these characters, resulting in some inconsistency.

A

B

The finished product!