Коллекция месопотамских древностей в Йенском университете им. Фридриха Шиллера: история и характеристика собрания

Abstract

The “Frau Professor Hilprecht Collection”, kept at the Institute of Languages and Cultures of the Middle East at Friedrich Schiller University in Jena, is the largest collection of Babylonian antiquities in Germany, rivaling in its cultural and historical significance the collections of the Museum of the Ancient Middle East in Berlin, the University of Pennsylvania Museum in Philadelphia, the Yale Babylonian Collection in New Haven, the Archaeological Museum in Istanbul, the British Museum in London, the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford and a number of other thematic museum collections. Standing out from their background due to the quality of objects, mainly discovered during the excavations of Nippur and dated from the Sumerian and Old Akkadian period (IV–III thousand BC) up to the early Islamic period, the Jena collection plays an important role in the study of culture, history, science and literature of the peoples of ancient Mesopotamia. The purpose of this article is an analytical review of this collection, highlighting the most significant and interesting artifacts, as well as considering the history of the origin, movement and study of this collection. Special attention is paid to the literary cuneiform tablets, some of which are unique and no longer found in any of the Mesopotamian collections, as well as the one-of-a-kind map of Nippur, dating from the middle of the II millennium BC and considered as the oldest map of the city in the world. The most important topic of the publication and translation of the texts of the tablets and the step-by-step digitization of all the objects of the collection is also touched upon.