# AncientScripts Parallel Corpus v1.0.0 — Build Log

**Build date:** 2026-10-19  
**Target:** 25,000 rows  
**Final:** **26,467 rows** (unique, after SHA-256 dedup; 2 duplicates removed from 26,469 loaded)

**SHA-256:** `89b6bd5576636122630cf611694b72055a7c9c1d15cfbc81399b39366e97eea2`

## Final Counts by Writing System
| Writing System | Rows | Sources |
|---|---|---|
| Latin | 13,614 | Pilot Caesar (404) + Latin extension (13,210) |
| Greek (polytonic) | 6,917 | Odyssey/Plato (3,938) + Iliad line-level (2,979) |
| Cuneiform | 4,341 | RIAo (4,343 loaded, 2 dups removed) |
| Chinese (Traditional) | 894 | Pilot TTC (81) + Analects (498) + Mencius/etc (315) |
| Devanagari (Sanskrit) | 701 | Bhagavad-Gita |
| **Total** | **26,467** | |

## Build Order & Yields

### 1. Latin — 13,210 rows
**Builder:** `build_latin.py` (PerseusDL/canonical-latinLit pipeline)  
**Sources:** Latin TEI (PerseusDL, CC BY-SA); English translations PD-verified per-text (pre-1930 imprint dates from TEI headers).  
**Coverage:** Plautus (20 plays), Terence (6 plays), Caesar (Civil Wars), Catullus (Carmina), Cicero (speeches against Verres, etc.).  
**Decisions:** 
- Excluded Caesar's Gallic War (already in pilot; avoids duplication).
- Denylist for non-PD/unverifiable translations (Way 1955, Spencer 1935-38, Mahoney modern, etc.).
- Guards: no zero-key merges, length-ratio ≤4.0, max 12k chars, 415 documented drops.
- transliteration=null (alphabetic, documented).

### 2. Greek — 3,938 rows (Odyssey/Plato) + 2,979 rows (Iliad) = 6,917 total
**Builder:** child subagent (Odyssey/Plato); build_iliad2.py (Iliad, by coordinator)  
**Sources:** Open Greek and Latin TEI (CC BY-SA 4.0); English translations PD-verified individually (pre-1929 imprints from `__cts__.xml`).  
**Coverage:** 
- Homer Odyssey (24 books, 2,431 rows): Murray OCT 1919 Greek + Murray Loeb 1919 English, ~5-line chunks via shared milestones.
- Homer Iliad (24 books, 24 rows book-level + 2,979 rows line-level): Monro & Allen OCT Greek + Butler 1898 English (book-level); Murray Loeb 1924-25 English (line-level, PD by age, discovered in OGL as perseus-eng3).
- Plato (35 works, 1,473 rows): Burnet OCT Greek + Loeb English (Fowler 1914-26, Lamb 1924-27, Bury 1926-29), Stephanus-page level.
- Plato Republic (10 books, 10 rows): Burnet OCT + Jowett 1892, book-level.
**Decisions:**
- Excluded Shorey Loeb Republic (1935-37, not PD).
- Iliad line-level uses Murray 1924-25 (not Butler) for 5-line alignment via English milestones to Greek `<l n="X">` line numbers.
- transliteration=null (alphabetic, documented).

### 3. Classical Chinese — 498 rows (Analects) + 315 rows (Mencius/etc) = 813 total (+81 pilot = 894)
**Builder:** `build_chinese.py` (Analects); child subagent for extension  
**Sources:** zh.wikisource.org (CC BY-SA transcription of PD text); James Legge English (1861, PD via Gutenberg).  
**Coverage:** 
- Analects (論語) 20 books, 498 chapters, chapter-level alignment.
- Mencius (孟子) 260 chapters + Great Learning (大學) 16 paragraphs + Doctrine of the Mean (中庸) 39 paragraphs = 315 rows.
**Decisions:**
- Excluded non-canonical `論語/知道第二十二` page.
- transliteration=pinyin (machine-generated, flagged in notes).
- ctext.org FORBIDDEN (not used).

### 4. Sanskrit — 701 rows (Bhagavad-Gita)
**Builder:** child subagent  
**Sources:** sa.wikisource.org transcription of Annie Besant & Bhagavan Das, *The Bhagavad-Gita* (1905, PD).  
**Coverage:** All 18 chapters, 701 verses, verse-level alignment.  
**Decisions:**
- Rejected Telang SBE 1882 (no verse numbers) and Arnold Song Celestial (no chapters).
- Speaker attributions stripped from both sides.
- transliteration=null? [VERIFY — Devanagari is alphasyllabary, may need IAST]

### 5. Cuneiform (Akkadian) — 4,341 rows (4,343 loaded, 2 dups removed)
**Builder:** `build_cuneiform/` (fetch_riao_tei.py, parse_riao_tei.py, atf2unicode.py, build_cuneiform.py)  
**Sources:** RIAo (Royal Inscriptions of Assyria online) via LMU Munich ORACC mirror (1,927 TEI files fetched, 0 failed). CC BY-SA 3.0 (project page) / CC0 (bulk metadata); using CC BY-SA 3.0.  
**Coverage:** 1,458 texts yielded 4,343 translation segments; 469 texts had no English translations (skipped).  
**Method:**
- Each row = one RIAo translation segment, aligned via explicit xtr:sref/xtr:eref.
- ATF→Unicode via hybrid mapper: MIT mapping.tsv (1123 entries) + Unicode names (1033 signs) + curated aliases + determinative table.
- Coverage: ~97% of sign tokens mapped; '?' marks unmapped (loud, documented); '▯' marks broken signs.
- transliteration=ATF (not null; cuneiform needs it).
**Decisions:**
- RIAo chosen over BALT (BALT has no English translations).
- ETCSL translations FORBIDDEN (not used).
- Dropped segments with no real script content (all broken).

### 6. Egyptian — SKIPPED
**Reason:** No bulk source with hieroglyphic + transliteration + English aligned. TLA requires registration; Gutenberg has English only; PDFs are not machine-readable. Documented honestly.

## Hard Constraints Compliance
- [x] Public-domain or academic-open ONLY. No copyrighted modern translations.
- [x] ctext.org FORBIDDEN — not used.
- [x] ETCSL translations FORBIDDEN — not used.
- [x] CC BY-SA sources attributed in translation_source field.
- [x] SHA-256 dedup on (script_text, translation).
- [x] Seed-1147 shuffle.
- [x] manifest.json with per-source counts, SHA-256, license summary.
- [x] No padding with junk. Actuals documented honestly.

## Problems Encountered

1. **Greek TEI milestone mismatch (Iliad):** The Iliad Greek has sparse milestones (every ~30 lines) while Murray English has dense milestones (every 5 lines); only 5 coincide. Solved by extracting Greek `<l n="X">` line elements (15,690 lines) and aligning to English 5-line milestone intervals.

2. **Cuneiform ATF→Unicode coverage:** ~3% of sign tokens unmapped (rare signs like GUN, MURUB₄, indexed variants BAD₅/MIN₃). Marked as '?' (loud, documented) rather than guessed. The transliteration field preserves the full ATF, so no information is lost.

3. **RIAo fetch reliability:** The LMU Munich mirror was slow (~20 files/min). All 1,927 TEI files fetched with 0 failures using polite 0.15s delays.

4. **Sanskrit verse alignment:** Solved by using Besant & Das 1905 (verse-numbered) instead of Telang (no verses) or Arnold (no chapters).

## Files Delivered
- `ancient-scripts-25k.jsonl` (26,467 rows, SHA-256: 89b6bd5576636122630cf611694b72055a7c9c1d15cfbc81399b39366e97eea2)
- `manifest.json` (per-source counts, SHA-256, license summary)
- `BUILD_LOG.md` (this file)
- `parts/` (individual part files + NOTES.md for each)
- `build_cuneiform/` (reusable ATF→Unicode mapper + TEI parser)
- `build_iliad2.py`, `build_chinese.py`, `assemble_corpus.py` (reusable builders)