Getting Started API

The API

The Glintstone REST API provides programmatic access to the full dataset — artifact metadata, ATF transliterations, lemmatizations, translations, lexical data, and more.

Base URL: https://api.glintstone.org

No authentication required. All endpoints return JSON.

First request

Search for Ur III tablets mentioning "lugal" (king):

GET /artifacts?search=lugal&period=Ur+III

With curl:

curl "https://api.glintstone.org/artifacts?search=lugal&period=Ur+III"

Response shape

{
  "items": [
    {
      "p_number": "P227657",
      "designation": "CDLI Seals 001234",
      "period": "Ur III (ca. 2112-2004 BC)",
      "provenience": "Ur (mod. Tell el-Muqayyar)",
      "genre": "Administrative",
      "language": "Sumerian",
      "pipeline_stage": "transcribed",
      "thumbnail_url": "https://..."
    }
  ],
  "total": 1842,
  "page": 1,
  "per_page": 24
}

Pagination

List endpoints accept page (1-based, default 1) and per_page (default 24). The response always includes total.

Errors

Standard HTTP status codes. Error bodies:

{ "detail": "Human-readable message" }

Code	Meaning
404	Resource not found
422	Validation error (invalid parameter)
500	Internal server error

Endpoint groups

• Artifacts — search, detail, ATF, images, lemmas
• Search & Agentic — hybrid semantic search, AI summaries, token interpretation
• Dictionary — signs, lemmas, written-form lookup
• Collections — personal research sets
• Composites — multi-tablet composite texts (Q-numbers)
• Stats & Meta — counts, health, version

The interactive API reference (Swagger UI) is at api.glintstone.org/docs.