Volume 37, Issue 1 -

A set of letters written by O. Puchstein to A. Erman during the years 1885 and 1886 throws light on the formation of the Berlin collections of Egyptian and Near Eastern Antiquities. The correspondence also reveals that Puchstein and Erman were led by aims not only of an artistic but of a scholarly and educational nature. The letters, which are kept in the State – and University Library Bremen (Germany), are published in transcription.

The present paper presents the publication of a new fragment of the Sumerian Hymn Nisaba A, a text used in XVIII th century scribal schools for teaching Sumerian.

In this article it is argued that the well known prayer of Enḫeduana, Nin me šara is meant for a ritual which was performed at night outside the temple. The En-Priestess tries to convince the goddess, which arrives as morning star, to come back into the temple, by telling her that she has not taken part in a conspiracy against her.

This article reviews the published corpus of Old Assyrian letters containing the noun sikkātum . Here it is argued that the sikkātum was not a religious procession, but instead that it was an extramural marketplace. Trade at this marketplace involved a high volume of metals and probably operated only seasonally, relating to the arrival of the earliest caravans in Anatolia. Furthermore, it is suggested that sikkātum is related to the west semtic word sukhōt and was used to refer to this seasonal extramural metals marketplace by metonymy.

The Akkadian terms ḫiṣnu and šiḫṭu designating qualities of barley and their interpretations proposed recently are discussed anew. Hitherto unnoticed passages of Middle Assyrian economic texts favour modified translations.

The Palermo Stone of black basalt, which probably stood in Heliopolis, is housed today in the Museum of Palermo, while smaller fragments of it are kept in museums in Cairo and London. This fragment can be regarded as the earliest Egyptian royal inscription, because its faces preserve the earliest royal annals. Its royal annals were comprised by the royal names from the Early Dynasty to the Fifth Dynasty and the principal events of that particular year. In addition, it provides us with significant information about the Old Kingdom, such as historical circumstances, the nature of these reigns and some king’s ritual activities. These are great values to us knowing about the royal deeds of the Old Kingdom.

In the following remarks the term “ mrgn ” once attested in Egyptian texts, is shown to be a se­mitic loanword providing an early example for the radix “ mrgn ” represented to my know­ledge only by younger semitic languages.

One of the best-known episodes described in the “Deeds of Suppiluliuma” is, when the Hittite king receives a letter from an Egyptian queen whose name is given as “Dahamunzu” in the cuneiform script. One crucial sentence in this part of the text ( tekri-wa naḫmi ) has always been difficult to understand since the exact meaning of the lexeme tekri - is not known. Nevertheless, many scholars have guessed a translation such as “ I fear such disgrace ” or similar. Since “ Dahamunzu ” has long been discovered to be the rendering of the Egyptian royal title tᴈ-ḥᵓ m.t nsw , an Egyptian etymology of tekri - does not seem unlikeley. It can indeed be interpreted as phonologically equivalent to Late Egyptian tᴈ-kᴈ.t “ vulva ” or “ cunt ” in the sense of “ prostitute ” or simply as a disrespective designation for a woman.

This article deals with newly found duplicates and joins to Hittite mythological texts. Additionally some fragments previously thought to be mythological could be reclassified.

If a free woman marries an ARAD she takes over his social status. Once taken it is irrevocable.

CTH 633 is a Hittite text including a prescribed ritual of a festival to be performed by a prince. Its first publisher read the text as a rite of passage, initiating a young prince into adulthood, based on assumptions of the meaning of three key terms in the text: the verbal noun ḫaššumaš which is the name of the festival, the location where the rite takes place, which is the arzana- house, and the participation of KAR.KID women, recognized in Mesopotamian scholarship as “prostitutes”. This article offers an alternative understanding of this text based on reexamination of these terms. While setting the ritual in the context of Hittite royal state religion, the ritual is interpreted from a methodological point of view as a political rite , part of the religious activities aimed at conferring royal legitimacy on the prince, who is the next in line to become the Great King of Ḫatti. The role of the KAR.KID women in the cultic activity is explained, and the arzana- house is identified as a place of cult.

The present article aims to investigate the connections between the Emar’s socio-political structures and the system of land-ownership that had different traits compared to other Syrian cities of the Late Bronze Age. The city of Emar and its region show a strong tradition of collective powers which goes back to the third millennium and influenced the society during the Late Bronze Age as well, but as this paper puts forward the land-ownership was individual.

Aim of the paper is the interpretation of the Urartian expression barzani zelde . Its meaning seems to be “a little piece” with barzani “piece” and zelde “little”.

The small tablet from an officially acknowledged private collection in Turkey (“tablet Erkakan 121”) registers rations of grain for 19 men whose names are non-Akkadian and in their majority Hurrian. The place of origin seems to be the still unidentified city Tigunanu because nine names are identical with names on the Ḫapiru prism found there.