A Catalogue of Texts and Authors

Abstract

In a previous paper in this journall evidence of scribal ancestors was collected. It was found thatl scribes in the late period profess descent from ancestors, some of whom are known from other sources as authors or editors of literary texts. The clearest evidence on this point came from fragments of a catalogue from the library of Ashurbanipal in which works are listed and ascribed to named scholars. At that time only two fragments had been published, though the writer was able to add a third. As the result of further researches four more new pieces have been identified, one of which has been joined to one of those previously known. The text of the catalogue is still incomplete, but the various fragments can now be put in order and the impression given is so different from the previous one that a full new edition is called for. This catalogue is no recent discovery. Like so much else in the British Museum, it was first identified by T. G. Pinches, before 1880.2 He showed the two duplicating pieces to Sayce, who put out a transliteration with notes in the Zettschrift Lfur KeilschritLforschung, volume I, 187-194 (1884). For the time this was quite a creditable edition. Cuneiform copies were not published until 189T, when Paul Haupt gave them in the second part of his Das babylonische Nimrodepos, pp. 90-92. In most cases Haupt read the tablets more accurately than Sayce, though not always,3 but he published no edition, nor did any other scholar until the present writer gave a transliteration in the aforementioned article. The present edition is based on new copies of all the pieces, which are given on pp. 60-63. Acknowledgements are made to the late Dr. F. W.