| # AncientScripts Parallel Corpus — Source Verdicts |
|
|
| Research date: 2026-10-19. Standard: ONLY public-domain or explicitly academic-open |
| sources. No scraping of copyrighted modern translations. Every verdict below cites |
| the source's own terms. |
|
|
| ## 1. Sumerian (cuneiform) — CAUTION / GO via ORACC |
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|
| **ETCSL (Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature, Oxford): NO-GO without permission.** |
| Terms (http://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/edition2/usingbrowse.php): "There is no restriction |
| on printing the compositions one-by-one for personal and educational use. However, |
| permission must be obtained before including the compositions in a book, compendium, |
| or similar for distribution or sale." A training dataset released on the Hub is a |
| compendium for distribution → permission required. Do not ingest ETCSL translations. |
|
|
| **ORACC (Open Richly Annotated Cuneiform Corpus): GO.** |
| License (https://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/doc/about/licensing/index.html): "released |
| under a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike license… you are free to copy, |
| distribute, transmit and adapt our work without permission" (attribute + share-alike). |
| Bulk access: JSON API per project — `http://oracc.org/[PROJECT]/manifest.json`, |
| `corpus.json`, `corpusjson/[ID].json` (documented at oracc.ub.uni-muenchen.de/doc/opendata/json). |
| Formats include `atf` (transliteration), `lem` (lemmatized), and `tr-en` (English |
| translation). 146 public projects. Yield: tens of thousands of texts with translations |
| (varies by project; e.g. royal-inscription projects are translation-rich). |
| Caveat: oracc.org and oracc.museum.upenn.edu were unreachable from our sandbox on |
| 2026-10-19 (connection drops); the Munich mirror serves the project list but not all |
| per-project JSON. Retry from another network or use per-project Zenodo dumps |
| (e.g. BALT: 2,990 Babylonian texts, zenodo.org/records/17792290). |
| Unicode: corpora store ATF transliteration (sign names like ŠUKU, BAN₂), NOT Unicode |
| cuneiform. True Unicode cuneiform (U+12000 block, well supported in fonts) requires a |
| sign-list mapping step — flagged as v2 work. |
|
|
| **CDLI: GO (with limits).** "Fully committed to open access… data… for download in many |
| formats, and through the API… reused by researchers, but also for commercial endeavours" |
| (cdli.earth). 300k+ artifacts. LIMIT: mostly transliteration + metadata; English |
| translations are sparse. Best as a transliteration/metadata source, not for triples. |
|
|
| ## 2. Akkadian (cuneiform) — GO via ORACC |
|
|
| Same verdict as Sumerian: ORACC is the primary source (CC BY-SA, JSON API, tr-en |
| formats). Akkadian royal inscriptions (RINAP etc.) and the BALT Zenodo dump are |
| translation-rich. CDLI as supplement. Same Unicode-cuneiform mapping caveat as above. |
|
|
| ## 3. Egyptian hieroglyphs — CAUTION (needs more research) |
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|
| **Thesaurus Linguae Aegyptiae (TLA, Berlin-Brandenburg Academy): CAUTION.** |
| Requires free registration; the interface is search-based with no documented bulk |
| API; and translations are in GERMAN, not English ("Texts are presented in |
| transliteration and in German translation"). The TLA *lemma list* is CC BY-SA 4.0 |
| (per hieroglyphica.org legal page), but full-text bulk extraction is not clearly |
| permitted or technically available. Not suitable as-is for an English-parallel corpus. |
| Unicode hieroglyphs (U+13000–U+1342F) have good font support — the blocker is licensing |
| and access, not encoding. |
| Alternative to investigate: the St. Andrews Corpus (transliteration + English |
| translation + some hieroglyphic text) — license not yet verified. Pyramid Texts |
| (Sethe, Univ. of Chicago) — likely public domain given age, not yet verified. |
|
|
| ## 4. Sanskrit (Devanagari) — GO |
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|
| **Sacred Books of the East (1879–1910, ed. Max Müller): GO.** Unambiguously public |
| domain by age. LIMIT: English translations only — no Devanagari source text. |
| **Wikisource (sa.wikisource.org): GO** with CC BY-SA 4.0 attribution on transcriptions |
| (the underlying texts are PD). Verified live 2026-10-19: the Bhagavad Gita in |
| Devanagari across 18 chapter subpages, verses numbered ॥१-N॥ in `<poem>` blocks. |
| Unicode Devanagari: excellent support. |
| Caveat found in pilot research: Edwin Arnold's "Song Celestial" (Gutenberg #2388, PD) |
| has NO chapter divisions after CHAPTER I — it is one continuous poem, so it cannot |
| cleanly align to verse- or chapter-numbered Devanagari. For verse-level Gita triples, |
| a verse-numbered PD translation is still needed (Besant/Das 1905 or Telang SBE Vol. 8 |
| — not yet pulled). IAST transliteration of Devanagari is deterministic and safe to |
| generate. |
|
|
| ## 5. Classical Chinese — GO via Wikisource; ctext.org is NO-GO |
|
|
| **ctext.org (Chinese Text Project): NO-GO for bulk.** Terms on every page: |
| "Please note that the use of automatic download software on this site is strictly |
| prohibited, and that users of such software are automatically banned without warning |
| to save bandwidth." Explicit anti-scraping + site-content copyright claim. Do not use. |
| **Wikisource (zh.wikisource.org): GO** (CC BY-SA transcription of PD text). Verified |
| 2026-10-19: 道德經 (王弼本), all 81 chapters cleanly marked, Wang Bi commentary in |
| `{{*|…}}` templates (strippable). Unicode Traditional Chinese: excellent. |
| Pilot pairing: Legge 1891 translation (Project Gutenberg #216, PD — "You may copy it, |
| give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License"). |
| Chapter-level 1:1 alignment verified across all 81 chapters. |
|
|
| ## 6. Ancient Greek — GO (script); translations need per-text check |
|
|
| **Open Greek and Latin: GO.** "Perseus has published 41 million words of Greek and 17 |
| million words of Latin in curated TEI XML… available under a Creative Commons |
| (CC-BY-SA) license. These texts were developed specifically so that third parties |
| could download, modify and reuse them." GitHub: PerseusDL/canonical-greekLit, |
| OpenGreekAndLatin/First1KGreek (+ Zenodo DOIs). Bulk: git clone. Unicode polytonic |
| Greek: excellent. |
| Translations: the Scaife Viewer carries some translations; Perseus's 2006 CC release |
| covered Greek, Latin AND English collections — but per-text license must be checked |
| (the Hopper FAQ notes publisher agreements restrict some works). Do not bulk-ingest |
| Perseus translations without verifying each text's license flag. |
|
|
| ## 7. Latin — GO (proven end-to-end in pilot) |
|
|
| **Open Greek and Latin: GO**, same CC BY-SA 4.0 terms as Greek (17M words of Latin). |
| **PerseusDL/canonical-latinLit** on GitHub contains parallel editions: e.g. |
| `data/phi0448/phi001/` (Caesar) ships BOTH `phi0448.phi001.perseus-lat2.xml` (Holmes |
| Latin edition) AND `phi0448.phi001.perseus-eng2.xml` (McDevitte & Bohn 1869 English |
| translation, PD by age) in matching CTS book/chapter structure — 404 aligned chapters |
| across 8 books, verified in the pilot. Unicode Latin: excellent (no transliteration |
| needed for alphabetic scripts; schema uses null). |
|
|
| --- |
|
|
| ## Pilot results (pilot.jsonl) |
|
|
| - **485 rows, 0 duplicates** (SHA-256 of script+translation), ids `ancient_pilot_000001…485` |
| - Chinese (Traditional): 81 — Tao Te Ching, Wang Bi recension + Legge 1891, chapter-aligned |
| - Latin: 404 — Caesar De bello Gallico 8 books, Holmes Latin + McDevitte/Bohn English, CTS chapter-aligned |
| - Spot checks: TTC ch.1 (道可道…) + pinyin + Legge all correct; Gallic War 1.1 |
| ("Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres…") correctly paired. |
|
|
| ## Schema notes / problems hit |
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|
| 1. `transliteration` is `null` for Latin (alphabetic script needs none). Schema permits null; documented per row. |
| 2. Chinese `transliteration` is machine pinyin (pypinyin, Mandarin-based, tone numbers). |
| It is NOT scholarly Classical Chinese romanization — flagged in `license`/`notes`. |
| A proper literary-Chinese romanization pass is v2 work. |
| 3. Legge's paragraph numbers ("1.", "2."…) are preserved inside `translation` (faithful |
| to source; documented). |
| 4. Sanskrit IAST was NOT included in the pilot (Gita dropped: Arnold unalignable). |
| IAST generation from Devanagari is deterministic — ready when a verse-numbered PD |
| translation is sourced. |
| 5. Cuneiform rows are deferred to v2: ORACC access was flaky from the sandbox and true |
| Unicode cuneiform needs an ATF→Unicode sign-mapping step. ORACC (CC BY-SA) remains |
| the designated source. |
| 6. Egyptian rows deferred: TLA unsuitable (German translations, no bulk API). Next step: |
| verify St. Andrews Corpus license. |
|
|
| ## Recommended build order for the full 25k |
|
|
| 1. Latin (OGL): thousands of chapters available now, proven pipeline. |
| 2. Greek (OGL): same pipeline; verify translation licenses per text. |
| 3. Classical Chinese (Wikisource + Gutenberg PD translations): chapter-aligned works |
| (Tao Te Ching, Analects, Mencius, etc.). |
| 4. Sanskrit (Wikisource Devanagari + verse-numbered PD translation — source TBD). |
| 5. Cuneiform via ORACC (needs reliable network path + ATF→Unicode mapping). |
| 6. Egyptian (pending source with English translations + bulk access). |
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