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Commit 896cb4bb authored by Simon Birol's avatar Simon Birol
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Update src/index.md

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## Plot of the Ahiqar story
The story of the wise Ahiqar is one of the most frequently edited and reworked tales in the literature of the ancient Near East (also in the Bible within the Book of Tobit). It describes how the childless Ahiqar (counsellor at the court of the Assyrian kings Sennacherib (reigned 705-681 BCE) and Esarhaddon (reigned 681-669 BCE)) adopts and trains his nephew Nadan to be his successor. However, it is Nadan himself who conspires against his uncle to kill him. Ahiqar saved his life with a trick and recovered from the attempted murder when the Assyrian King received a challenge to solve a riddle sent by the Pharaoh of Egypt. Hence, Ahiqar solved the riddle and various other tasks while in Egypt. Finally, he lectures Nadan afterwards with a lesson which finally puts him to death.
The story of the wise Ahiqar is one of the most frequently edited and reworked tales in the literature of the ancient Near East. Ahiqar also features in the apocryphal Book of Tobit. It describes how the childless Ahiqar (counsellor at the court of the Assyrian kings Sennacherib (reigned 705-681 BCE) and Esarhaddon (reigned 681-669 BCE) adopts and trains his nephew Nadan to be his successor. However, it is Nadan himself who conspires against his uncle to kill him. Ahiqar escaped execution by a trick and emerged from hiding in time to solve a riddle received by the Assyrian king from the Egyptian pharaoh. As a result, his nephew is condemned to death; but Ahiqar, who is reinstated, has the opportunity to lecture Nadan on morality before his nephew dies.
## The peculiarity of the Syriac and Arabic versions
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The extensive Syriac and Arabic versions played a central role in the transmission of the (originally Aramaic) material into other languages and literary traditions. The last attempt so far to compile a reasonably comprehensive account of the Ahiqar’s story tradition was made more than a hundred year ago by F. C. Conybeare et al. in 1913, but the study does not include all known textual witnesses. As for the Aramaic version, several publications have since appeared, which makes them well accessible. Despite the fundamental importance of the Syrian and Arabic versions, reliable text editions are still lacking. The aim of the project is to fill this gap and provide a textual and literary analysis of the Syriac and Arabic versions of the Ahiqar tradition in digital form to establish the material and technical basis for further research on the other versions.
Therefore, the main text witnesses of the Syriac and Arabic versions have been identified, transcribed, and translated. Furthermore, the names of people, places, motifs, and biblical references have been tagged. A short description and further literature to the manuscripts have also been appended. Related to the manuscripts, it should be noted that several Syriac text witnesses bear impacts of local spoken language (esp. regarding vocalization and spirantization). Only those phenomena, that can be described as gross errors, have been corrected (related to orthography and content).
Therefore, the main text witnesses of the Syriac and Arabic versions have been identified, transcribed, and translated. Furthermore, the names of people, places, motifs, and biblical references have been tagged. A short description of the manuscripts has been appended, with a list of relevant publications. Several of these manuscripts exhibit features of the scribe's own dialect of Syriac (esp. regarding vocalization and spirantization). Only those phenomena that can be described as gross errors have been corrected (related to orthography and content).
All texts in the present archive are reserved under a Creative Commons Licence (CC-BY-SA). These texts were created as XML-files with an own scheme and in following the Guidelines for Electronic Text Encoding and Interchange (in version P5) of the Text Encoding Initiative (TEI). However, some of the images were reserved under a Creative Commons Licence (CC-BY-SA), too, while others can be used only with a VPN-connection of the University of Göttingen.
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