The Chicago Syllabary and the Louvre Syllabary AO 7661

Abstract

Babylonian scribes used for their Semitic language a writing system, known as the cuneiform system, which had been devised by the Sumerians for a language of entirely different character. Their profession required them to interpret, to write, and even to compose Sumerian texts. This situation resulted in a literature which compared the two languages and explained Sumerian forms, words, and sentences. It became gradually systematized in 'series' and may in a sense be called linguistic. The book to be reviewed here deals with two texts out of this literature. The author had to perform a double task: (1) he had to offer a reading and an interpretation of the texts, or, since he had predecessors, to improve upon them; (2) he had to assign to his specimens their proper place within the 'linguistic' literature of the Babylonians. As to (1), Hallock's predecessors had already done most of the work. The progress he has made concerns minor though by no means insignificant details. One may rightly ask whether a less ambitious form of publication, e.g. short comments on certain lines, would not have sufficed. Of material not known before, only the 'list' BM 29625 (CT XLI 47 f.) has been added, the pertinence of which had been noticed by Gadd when he edited the text. The autograph of the Chicago text which Hallock presents on plates 3-10 is certainly more faithful to the original (see the photos on plates 1 and 2) than the one previously published. The second task has hardly been attacked, nor was that necessary. For the article by H. S. Schuster in ZA NF 10.217-70 anticipated almost everything that could be said on the subject. It is hard to see how the Chicago Syllabary and AO 7661 could be treated on a par, as has been done. The tablets do not form part of the same series. Much the same ground-the readings and Akkadian equivalents of Sumerian words expressed by simple signs-was covered by the Babylonians in two series, a shorter one in 8 tablets, and a longer one in more than 40, probably 42. The Chicago Syllabary is the 4th tablet in the shorter series, the Paris text belongs to the longer series; more specifically, it runs parallel to the beginning of the 5th tablet in the shorter series which has partly survived in BM 38129 (Hallock 36 ff.). A comprehensive treatment should have included the material which belongs to the longer version of the Chicago Syllabary.