A New Volume of Nuzi Texts

Abstract

After an interval of five years caused by the untimely death of E. Chiera, the indefatigable excavator and editor of the Nuzi texts, the American Schools of Oriental Research have resumed the publication of the cuneiform tablets which he discovered at the foot of the mound of Yalghan Tepe -Nuzi. The new volume contains 114 texts (Nos. 560-673 of the tablets found in the so-called house of Tebiptilla). With a few exceptions, they belong to the same classes of administrative and juridical documents as Nos. 1-559. They furnish, however, so many new details that they deserve the full attention of all scholars who are interested in the history of the Mitannian state and its dependencies. In fact, one text proves once more the correctness of II. Lewy's thesis that the archive which contained all these tablets was kept by officers who represented the king of Mitanni in the town of Nuzi. We refer to No. 612, a record concerning 50(?) war chariots under the command of a captain of fifty (rab ahani); this tablet is sealed by Hjutipapu, i. e., the ~ikin maii, or governor, Hjutipapu, whom we know from Nos. 135 and 321 of the same collection of texts as one of the highest officers of the Mitannian empire. A comparison of the (unfortunately badly preserved) impressions on Nos. 612 and 135, both of which end with the words aban Hu-ti-pa-pu seal of Hutipapu, seems to support this conclusion, since both impressions exhibit parts of a tree and of a pair of wings 1 and may well have been made with the same seal. Among the first texts of the volume, there are a few documents (Nos. 560, 561, 562, 566, 567) which record several, in one case as many as fourteen, legal transactions of the same type on one tablet. These texts closely parallel No. 82, a previously published record of two adoptions of a very special type. No. 570, a brotherhood document, contains a new clause (iu-tu mi'i