A Bibliographical List of Cuneiform Inscriptions from Canaan, Palestine/Philistia, and the Land of Israel

Abstract

The area of study of this paper, unlike Egypt to the west, and Syria and Mesopotamia to the north and east, has yet to produce a proper archive of cuneiform texts, although archaeologists and others have discovered around ninety cuneiform objects over the past century or so. Yet, due to the uneven pace of discovery and changing political and academic realities in the region over the years, no attempt has ever been made to study these cuneiform objects as a group, and the last published list of the relevant material was that of K. Galling in Textbuch zur Geschichte Israels in 1968. At present not only is there no comprehensive edition or bibliography of the cuneiform texts in our corpus, but there is not even an accurate list, leaving the materials largely inaccessible to most scholars. Our current project, Cuneiform in The Land of Israel and Canaan, is intended to answer this need. The main goal of the project is the publication of a book that will include an introduction to the topic, editions of the inscriptions with philological notes, indexes, new handcopies, and photographs. We present here the first fruits of our endeavors: a bibliographical list of our corpus with a brief summary of our findings to date.