Data‑Wrangling Ancient Texts: Building an Open Dataset of Genesis Lifespans and Sumerian Reigns

Description and use

An open CSV dataset aligning Genesis lifespans and Sumerian reigns, preserving textual variants and source provenance, with reproducible analysis scripts.

Problem

Create a machine‑readable table that aligns lifespans from Genesis and reign lengths from the Sumerian King List while preserving textual variants and source provenance.

Outcome

A publicly available, citation‑rich dataset that aligns lifespans and reigns, highlights textual differences, and provides reproducible analysis scripts.

Workflow

• 1. Define scope and groups of rows.
• 2. Decide on a wide table schema to match spreadsheet use.
• 3. Map textual variants for Genesis (MT, LXX, SP) and Sumerian reigns from ETCSL.
• 4. Fetch and parse source texts, leaving blanks for missing data.
• 5. Handle ETCSL ASCII transliteration (replace ‘c’ with ‘š’, keep raw form in notes).
• 6. Store data in UTF‑8 CSV with provenance columns.
• 7. Load CSV with pandas to verify and compute statistics.
• 8. Plot log‑scale bar chart for visual comparison.
• 9. Publish dataset and code, documenting limitations and sources.

Evidence

The CSV has four groups of rows: 19 Genesis patriarchs, 1 LXX‑only row, 8 antediluvian kings, 10 early postdiluvian kings

Source

We decided not to [force] the two traditions into one "years" column. A patriarch's lifespan and a king's reign are different quantities

Source

Our first scrape took these strings literally. That gave us a table where Gilgamesh was named "Gilgamec", which looks like a typo

Source

Output: total_lifespan_MT 609.0 total_lifespan_LXX 640.4 total_lifespan_SP 577.0

Source