The BDTNS Project

The Database of Neo-Sumerian Texts (or BDTNS, its acronym in Spanish) is a searchable electronic corpus of Neo-Sumerian administrative cuneiform tablets dated to the 21st century B.C. During this period, the kings of the Third Dynasty of Ur built an empire in Mesopotamia managed by a complex bureaucracy that produced an unprecedented volume of written documentation. It is estimated that museums and private collections all over the world hold at least 120,000 cuneiform tablets from this period, to which should be added an indeterminate number of documents kept in the Iraq Museum.

       Consequently, BDTNS was conceived by Manuel Molina (CSIC) in order to manage this enormous amount of documentation. The project initially rested on two fundamental pillars. First, the boost given by Marcel Sigrist, who in 1996 put at M. Molina’s disposal his Ur III catalogue of more than 30,000 texts. Second, the bulk of Ur III transliterations prepared in 1993 by Remco de Maaijer and Bram Jagersma (Rijksuniversiteit, Leiden), made freely available on their website; over the years this material grew considerably and was made accessible to M. Molina in 2001 via the Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. All the transliterations in BDTNS based on that work are properly credited on their respective catalogue records.

       The work on BDTNS began, therefore, in 1996 at the Instituto de Filología (now Instituto de Lenguas y Culturas del Mediterráneo y Oriente Próximo) of the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC). Six years later, in 2002, it appeared online. In the same year, it began to be officially supported, thanks to two three-year research projects funded by the Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnología (now Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades):

• BFF2001-2319. “Digitization of the Neo-Sumerian corpus of administrative cuneiform tablets (c. 2100-2000 BC)”. PI: M. Molina. Host institution: CSIC. Funding: €84,909. Duration: From 2002/01/01 to 2004/12/31.

• HUM2004-1516. “Digitization of the Neo-Sumerian corpus of administrative cuneiform tablets (c. 2100-2000 BC). Second part”. PI: M. Molina. Host institution: CSIC. Funding: €71,600. Duration: From 2005/01/01 to 2008/03/31.

Throughout these years, BDTNS has worked closely with the Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (CDLI), founded and directed by Robert K. Englund (UCLA) and Peter Damerow (Max Planck Institute for the History of Science), and now led by Jacob L. Dahl (University of Oxford), Bertrand Lafont (CNRS), Émilie Pagé-Perron (University of Oxford) and Jürgen Renn (Max Planck Institute for the History of Science). BDTNS also collaborates with the Pennsylvania Sumerian Dictionary Project (ePSD), directed by Steve Tinney (Penn Museum), and with several other projects. BDTNS has also benefited from the material generously provided by several other scholars, particularly Marcel Sigrist (École Biblique et Archéologique Française, Jerusalem) and David I. Owen (Cornell University, Ithaca NY). Likewise, authors of new publications of Neo-Sumerian texts have regularly supplied digitized versions of their works that have greatly facilitated the update of BDTNS.

       Since February 2025, BDTNS is hosted on the servers of the Galicia Supercomputing Center (CESGA), a center for research and services to R+D+i groups, promoted by the Xunta de Galicia and the CSIC.

BDTNS in Figures

BDTNS currently provides searchable cataloguing data, transliterations, images, bibliography, collections, seal inscriptions and geotagged locations for 104,923 Neo-Sumerian administrative cuneiform documents. Part of this material remains unpublished, and access to it is strictly at its editor’s discretion.

       More specifically, the texts in BDTNS can be classified as follows (April, 2025):

Transliterations for most of the published texts, images, a catalogue of seal inscriptions, collections, a complete bibliography, and geotagged data about their provenience are also provided by BDTNS:

Staff

Collaborators:
Palmiro Notizia, Madrid (2011-2015)
Jesús M. Arrojería, Zarautz

Programmers:
Alejandro Feijóo Fraga, CESGA (2024-2025)
Cristina Corral Sánchez, SIGyHD, CCHS-CSIC (2020)
Carlos Fernández Freire, SIGyHD, CCHS-CSIC (2020)
Ángel Díaz del Castillo, ILC-CSIC (2015/04)
Jonatan Ortiz Salas, ILC-CSIC (2010/30/09 to 2012/09/29)
Juan Carlos Martínez Torres, ILC-CSIC (2002/01/01 to 2008/03/31)