Tablet Collection Research Articles

The British Museum's Ashurbanipal Library Project

The purpose of the British Museum's Ashurbanipal Library Project is to investigate the content of the significant tablet collection that this Assyrian king assembled for his royal library. The initial project is focused on the Babylonian texts in order to establish the compositions involved and their relation to the rest of the Kouyunjik Collection and to the collecting activities of Ashurbanipal (668–627 BC).The examination of the Babylonian texts of Ashurbanipal's library is a difficult task. Whoever is familiar with the Nineveh texts knows that the tablets were originally stored in four different buildings (see Fig. 1): in the South-West Palace, in the North Palace, and in the vicinity of the temples of Ištar and Nabû, with some additional find spots on and off the mound Kouyunjik. It is the tablet collection of the South-West Palace that formed the library of Ashurbanipal, but the excavation reports of Nineveh very seldom refer to the places where the tablets were found. To reconstruct the different libraries and archives is a very time-consuming task and beyond the possibilities of the six-month timetable for this project. Therefore, for the time being, I decided to consider the Babylonian literary tablets and all legal documents written during the reign of Ashurbanipal and his predecessors as coming from one place, namely Ashurbanipal's library or libraries at Nineveh.While surveying the approximate figure of 26,000 tablets and fragments that the British excavators unearthed in Nineveh I entered the genre and content of the Babylonian texts in a database, together with a short description of the fragments, e.g. shape, colour, number of columns, lines and dividing lines. This database includes information on about 4290 tablets and fragments, of which 610 have already been rejoined to other fragments. Therefore, until now, the total number of Babylonian texts and fragments excavated in Nineveh is about 3680 — or in other words about one-seventh of all of the British Museum's Nineveh collection. The database I created also serves as a basis for collecting all texts of the same kind in order to identify joining fragments.

Singing an eršemma for the Damaged Statue of a God

While collating A 16941, a Kuyunjik fragment in the tablet collection of the Oriental Institute, Chicago, I took the opportunity to also have a closer look at the ritual to which this fragment belongs, commonly known as TuL 27, after its first edition by E. Ebeling. Realizing that a few of my new readings might help to better understand the ritual setting for refurbishing a cult statue, I herewith dedicate these to the memory of a friend who always had a keen interest in matters philological and their relationship to our reconstructions of material culture.

Notes on a New Volume of Old Assyrian Texts

The publication of the remainder of the collection of Old Assyrian tablets of the Charles University in Prague provides many significant additions to archives of well-known traders. Improvements are suggested for the reading and interpretation of a number of these texts.

The contribution of thermoanalytical techniques to the conservation treatment of cuneiform tablets in the British Museum

The British Museum’s collections contain artefacts composed from almost the whole range of materials known to mankind prior to this century. For more than 70 years, analysis has been a vital tool in the conservation of the museum’s collections and recently thermoanalytical techniques have been shown to complement techniques existing within the museum’s laboratories. Their major contribution to date has been in a project re-examining the firing process used as part of the conservation of an important collection of unfired clay tablets bearing cuneiform script from ancient Mesopotamia. Differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) has shown that the 130 000 plus tablets from 22 major sites should be treated with the same firing schedule. Together with thermogravimetyric analysis (TGA) and thermomechanical analysis (TMA), the results have indicated several beneficial modifications to the present firing schedule, the most important being the lowering of the firing temperature to avoid a damaging calcite decomposition reaction.

A 3405: An Unusual Astronomical Text from Uruk

The Tablet Collection of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago contains several astronomical texts among the series bearing registration numbers A 3400ff. These tablets, all bought from dealers, apparently come from Uruk.1 The majority of the texts contain mathematical astronomy and have been published by Otto Neugebauer in his Astronomical Cuneiform Texts (Lund Humphries, London, 1955). One (A 3456) is a collection of observations of Mercury and the dates of solstices, equinoxes and Sinus phenomena for the years SE 116 to 132.2 A 3405, the text discussed here, contains a collection of the dates and longitudes of planetary phenomena and lunar eclipses for the period SE 60 to 70. In answer to a query by Neugebauer, A 3405 was identified by J. Schaumberger as containing planetary observations from the same period as those cited by Ptolemy in his Almagest. Working from a photograph, Neugebauer and Abraham Sachs studied A 3405, and in his 1948 classification article Sachs described it as follows:

Cuneiform Texts in the Arizona State Museum, Tucson

Cuneiform tablet collections are not commonly found in the western United States. Aside from those at the P. A. Hearst Museum, the University of California at Berkeley, and the Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum of San Jose, only a few collections from the western states have been published. However, recent research into the life and career of Edgar J. Banks1 revealed a number of small collections that had not attracted the attention of scholars until now.2 Among them, the cuneiform collection at the Arizona State Museum, Tucson has remained largely unpublished although certain scholars have been familiar with it for decades.3 There is no record at the museum of those who may have worked on the collection although given the number of Assyriologists and archaeologists who have affiliated with the university over the years, it is likely that some study has been undertaken, at least of individual texts. In any case, we have rectified the situation by providing the publication of the Ur III texts along with a catalogue that includes the remaining unpublished tablets in the collection.

Tablets for Lord Amherst

In the years around the turn of the present century, relying on the contacts and expertise of Theophilus Goldridge Pinches, Lord William Amhurst Tyssen-Amherst, 1st Baron Amherst of Hackney (1835–1909), put together what came to be one of the most wide-ranging and important collections of cuneiform tablets to have been assembled in private hands in this country. Since the publication of Volume 1 of The Amherst Tablets in 1908 by Pinches, followed much later by E. Sollberger's The Pinches Manuscript, the Amherst Collection has been familiar enough among Assyriologists, but perhaps less has been known of the collector, and of his other collections. The Museum at the family estate of Didlington Hall, Northwold, Norfolk, contained in its heyday a much broader range of material than cuneiform inscriptions. From the Near Eastern world there were very extensive collections of Egyptian papyri and antiquities, but the Hall also housed remarkable accumulations of incunabula and printed books, porcelain, tapestries, sculpture and other works of art. It is evident that the specific pursuit of cuneiform sources was inspired by a profound interest in the origin and development of writing and printing.The survival of a group of private letters covering the years 1896–1910, from Lord Amherst to Pinches, with some draft reply letters from Pinches and other relevant documents, has entailed the preservation of unusual information about the process of acquisition and the sources of the tablets themselves. The present paper offers a summary of this information, in the hope of conveying something of the circumstances and motives at play at such a period.

Texts and Fragments

Previous articleNext article No AccessTexts and FragmentsPeter R. ObermarkPeter R. Obermark Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Journal of Cuneiform Studies Volume 40, Number 2Autumn 1988 A journal of ASOR Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.2307/1359665 Copyright 1988 American Schools of Oriental ResearchPDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

A Bibliography of the Tablet Collections of the University Museum

A Bibliography of the Tablet Collections of the University Museum

Bel-epuš and Tammaritu

In 1965 Richard D. Barnett, then keeper of Western Asiatic Antiquities at the British Museum, asked me to undertake the compilation of a catalogue of the Sippar collection of cuneiform tablets in the British Museum. This collection, containing more than 30,000 tablets, was obtained by Rassam and others towards the end of the last century and at the beginning of this one. Most of the Sippar collection consists of economic texts from the Neo-Babylonian period. However some texts from other periods and other genres and even texts from other sites are included. Since 1965 I have spent almost every summer working on the Sippar catalogue. The project is now drawing to a close and the resulting catalogue will appear soon in three volumes. It seems only fitting that I use this opportunity to honour Richard D. Barnett by publishing a most interesting text from the Sippar collection.The text published below is a deposition by a man named Bel-epuš in which he divides all of his worldly goods between his wife and his servants. The reasons he may have had for writing this deposition are suggested below.

The Myth of Girra and Elamatum

Dr. Barnett has long taken an interest in the recovery of Mesopotamian mythology, and many is the time that he has suggested to us that the enigmatic scene on a cylinder-seal represents “a myth now lost”. It is a pleasure therefore to dedicate to him the first edition of a newly recovered fragment of an Old Babylonian myth concerning the fixing of the destiny of Girra, the god of fire and giver of light to man, after his defeat of Elamatum.BM 78962 (Bu 89-4-26, 257) is one of a collection of tablets purchased by E. A. W. Budge in Baghdad, and said by him to include tablets from Sippar and Tell ed-Der. The collection includes the Old Babylonian Atrahasis tablets BM 78941 and 78942, the provenance of which has been discussed by Lambert and Millard. It seems reasonable to assume that BM 78962 like them comes from Sippar or Tell ed-Der and to date it on palaeographical grounds to the reign of Ammisaduqa or thereabouts. The content of the tablet was quite obscured by dirt and salt until 1973 when it was baked and cleaned by Mr. C. A. Bateman.

The Dream of Kurigalzu and the Tablet of Sins

A rather choice cuneiform fragment from the British Museum forms the subject of the present note, viz. BM 47749 = 81-11-3, 454, here copied as Fig. 1. The composition may be conveniently classed in the “historical-literary” genre, or more specifically, in the “historical epic” genre, although at present no more than one-quarter of the original tablet is available. It is with much pleasure that I dedicate this study to the distinguished sometime Keeper of the Department of Western Asiatic Antiquities who is the recipient of this celebratory volume, and who for so many years had the resources of the British Museum tablet collections under his care.The small group of historical epics discussed by A. K. Grayson includes three Late Babylonian copies of texts from Babylon describing events under second millennium kings, two of which are concerned with Kassite kings; a Kurigalzu (probably Kurigalzu II), and Adad-šuma-uṣur. The present Late Babylonian text, BM 47749, is likewise concerned with one of the kings named Kurigalzu, but differs from the published manuscripts in having one, rather than two, columns per side.

Notes from the Babylonian Collection, II: Old Babylonian HAR-ra

The late Edgar J. Banks, source of so many collections of cuneiform tablets throughout the United States, left a considerable number of clay cones and tablets to his widow at his death in 1945. When it became known to me in 1970 that she was anxious to dispose of them, contact was quickly made with her and with her daughter, Mrs. James McLachlan. Over a thousand tablets thus came into the possession of the Yale Babylonian Collection, where most of them are now accessioned among the numbers 15339-16384. Subsequently a large number of fragments were turned over to the Collection by the Banks family; these remain to be accessioned. The cones were also examined, but as they all proved to be duplicates of familiar examples of Lagash and Old Babylonian royal inscriptions, only a representative sample was retained (now YBC 16435-16445) and the rest were returned to the family and disposed of elsewhere. Among the tablets thus newly accessioned, by far the majority were neoSumerian archival texts from Umma and PuzrwiT-Dagan (Drehem), with a sprinkling of earlier or later date. But here and there some canonical texts were identified in the group, for example, Inanna and Ebih lines 121-32 (YBC 16037). In some ways the most interesting of these isolated texts is YBC 16317, presented here in copy and transliteration.

A New Musical Term in Ancient Mesopotamian Music

The fragment of Mesopotamian music lexicography published here was identified in the tablet collection of the Babylonian Section of the University Museum, Philadelphia, during a search for certain Sumerian literary fragments. It is offered to Oliver Gurney since it supplements the text of Nabnitu XXXII of whose major source he is the copyist and pioneer decipherer. Furthermore, the new musical term revealed by the text here may have a bearing on the treatise for the tuning of the Babylonian harp published by Professor Gurney in a previous number of this journal.

Texts and Fragments

Previous articleNext article No AccessTexts and FragmentsBenjamin R. FosterBenjamin R. Foster Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Journal of Cuneiform Studies Volume 31, Number 4October 1979 A journal of ASOR Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.2307/1359753 Views: 2Total views on this site Copyright 1979 American Schools of Oriental ResearchPDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Native Group Clinder Seal Engravers of Karum Ksnish Level II.

Nimet Özgüç, The Anatolian Group of Cylinder Seal Impressions from Kültepe, Ankara, 1965 (hereafter AnatGr). Although few specific references will be made to this book, its content, observations and conclusions will be implicit throughout this paper. For example, I do not indicate earlier studies of the style of the Kültepe impressions as they are giyen fully in AnatGr, p. 45, to which add Mebrure Tosun, "Styles in Kültepe Seal Engraving as Expressions of Various Cultural Influences," in Studies in Honor of Benno Landsberger on His Seventy - fifth Birthday, April 21, 1965 (Oriental Institute Publications, Assyriological Studies, 16), Chicago, 1965, pp. 183-188. All references to the seal impressions will follow the catalogue numbers in AnatGr, and of course this study is dependent on the excellent illustrations in AnatGr. It is a pleasure to acknowledge the active encouragement and cooperation of Tahsin and Nimet Özgüç, while I was engaged on this project. For work with the actual tablets I am much indebted to Raci Temizer, director of the Hittite Archaeological Museum at Ankara, and Seyyide Celikkol, curator of the tablets. For similar permission to study the tablets in Istanbul, I am indebted to Necati Dolunay, director of the Archaeological Museums, and the curators of the tablet collection, Muazzez Çığ and Hatıce Kızılyay. This work was accomplished during a study year in Turkey made possible by a fellowship granted by the American Research Institute in Turkey.

An Old Babylonian Business Archive of Historical Interest

Previous articleNext article No AccessAn Old Babylonian Business Archive of Historical InterestDorothy L. OrmsbyDorothy L. Ormsby Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Journal of Cuneiform Studies Volume 24, Number 41972 A journal of ASOR Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.2307/1359625 Views: 2Total views on this site PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

A View of Hittite Literature

IN ATTEMPTING TO GIVE an outline of Hittite we shall try to take term literature in its specific sense, considering as mainly such compositions as myths, epics, prayers, and what little exists of poetry. We shall have to include historiography, because narrative was a field in which Hittites excelled from early times on and because many texts have their merits also as compositions. We are, however, aware of fact that our definition of literature is not that of ancients. Professor Oppenheim in a recent article' pointed out that great majority of texts forming what he calls the stream of tradition of Babylonia-others have called it canon because of standardization it underwent around 1000 B.C.-is in sense that it consists of material scribes considered essential for their training, and that its bulk is made up by word lists, omens, and prescriptions for exorcistic rites. The preference given to these kinds of texts reflects an encyclopedic approach, as Professor Landsberger was first to point out, insofar as word lists aim at covering entire vocabulary, omens consider all possible occurrences that could be taken as portentous, and magic rites also aim at complete coverage. As far as Hittites are concerned, we shall see that their scribes used this main stream of Babylonian tradition as syllabus in their training, too. But they also produced other classes of texts that from our point of view are non-literary, while they themselves treated them as part of their literature. This last statement is based on an observation of contents of various tablet collections found in different locations within Hittite capital, Bogazkoy. Such a study is rendered difficult by fact that unfortunately tablets found before World War I in three different locations were hopelessly mixed after they had reached museum. In contrast to this, find spots of all tablets found after First War have been carefully recorded. Some notes of first excavator, Hugo Winckler, were recently rediscovered by Professor Otten; they give find spots of a little over one hundred texts2-out of 10,000 fragments found in those early excavations! Taken together with what was later found in same buildings as well as in some others, and also taking into account what texts were absent in places recently excavated, one can get a rough, though incomplete, picture of contents of various collections. It would seem that one building in particular deserves name library. This is a building situated on slope of acropolis, above temple of city, partly excavated by Winckler in 1911 and re-investigated in recent years including campaigns of 1960 and 1961.3 Most of what may be called scholarly and literary texts seem to have been kept there: vocabularies, omens, epics, and texts of historical tradition-categories to which we shall return. On other hand, largest number of state treaties was found by Winckler in temple precinct; this fits statement contained in some treaties that they were deposited in temple. However, majority of texts found in each

The Chronology of Šulgi Again

W ~HEN F. R. Kraus, at that time curator of the tablet collection in the Museum of the Near East in Istanbul, collated the date list of Sulgi Ni.394 (== BE i/2 No. I25) of that museum, he found that the three last lines of the obverse give the text of one date formula, not of three, as had formerly been believed.' In the meantime this date has turned up on a tablet excavated at Nippur during the season of 15 5/56 ;2 its excavation number is 5N-T49o. A copy of that tablet is given on Plate XVIII. Its interest rests mainly on the date formula which leads beyond what had been known from the date list. It reads as follows:

The Campaigns of Sargon II of Assur: A Chronological-Historical Study

The military expeditions of Sargon II started in the second year of his reign (720) and were conducted almost yearly until his death in 705 B. C. The difficulty in dating these campaigns lies mainly in the fact that their order in the Annals of Khorsabad is inconsistent with that in the fragmentary Prisms of Nineveh. The Prisms date the campaigns of Sargon by one palu earlier than the Annalsl. An unpublished fragment of Sargon's Annals from the Tablet Collection of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago A.16947, which seems to be the only known speci-