Volume 36, Issue 2

Based on the correspondences between Hurrian and Urartian obstruents and affricates the author presents her view on the proto-Hurro-Urartian phonological system and its transformation and further evolution in Hurrian and Urartian. In the second paragraph the author discusses the different reflexes of the Hurrian labial spirant and sonorant phonemes in Urartian and proposes her interpretation of the Urartian genitive/dative plural marker -ave against its singular counterpart -( i ) y (gen.)/- ye (dat.). In the last paragraph she postulates, that the vowel - i - in the imperfective/present tense ergative forms in both Hurrian and Urartian go back to the Hurro-Urartian valency marker - i /- ia .

The aim of this paper is to analyze some problems related to the circulation of Red Lustrous Wheel-made Ware in the Eastern Mediterranean areas and especially in Anatolia. Important considerations will regard the recent excavations of the Late Bronze Age levels at Yumuktepe/Mersin in Plain Cilicia. Here, the studies carried out on a small but representative selection of red fine ceramics have permitted our increased knowledge of matters pertaining to Red Lustrous Wheel-made ware’s “imitations”, “imports” and “coarse variations”. Finally, these data will be used to shed more light and pose new questions over the appearance and the diffusion of this ware in Southern Anatolia and generally in the territories under Hittite cultural control.

At the end of the third millennium BC, some occupational changes began to appear in northern Mesopotamia and southeastern Anatolia. This period is accompanied by some settlement changes such as contraction, destruction, abandonment and dispersal into some sub-regions of both regions. Although decline in aggregate settlement area and in the settled population as well as a shift to a dispersed rural settlement in some sub-regions, other parts of the areas were densely settled, the number of settlements increasing significantly, with some important centers flourishing in this period.       This article will attempt to examine why these neigboring regions are dominated by opposing settlement patterns and how the great increase in the number of sites and population in the Birecik-Carchemish basin, the Gaziantep plain and the Upper Tigris valley and the concomitant decrease in the Karababa region during the EB/MB transitional period can be explained.

In this paper, we publish in copy, transliteration and translation a previously unpublished Ur III legal record from Umma. It can be shown, on the basis of internal and prosopographic evidence that the tablet belongs to the relatively large group of Umma legal records that are housed in the British Museum and currently being published by Manuel Molina. This di-til-la is of particular interest, however, in that it includes an appellate process in which an initial legal ruling adjudicated some aspects of the slave sale in question, but other aspects such as the purchase price were appealed to the court of the provincial governor of Umma. We draw some parallels with the appellate process in Old Babylonian legal documents and conclude with a brief discussion of the *-na-na . . . nu- ‘only’ construction in Sumerian.

This paper analyses the aggressive defence practised by the inhabitants of Razama during the siege of the city by an army led by Atamrum in 1765 BCE, as it is described in several Mari texts. Special attention is payed to the reconstruction of the defensive action described in ARM 14 104 + , a text which reflects the expertise of the Razameans in this kind of military action as well as the inability of the besiegers to counteract it.