Volume 39, Issue 2 -

Much progress in the study of the Hurrian language has been made over the past twenty years, but issues of grammar and lexicon still persist. Advances made with the language have made it necessary to reassess previous translations of Hurrian words. This holds true for nominal forms in = ikkonni , which have been translated as negatives ( fōrikkonni “the blind” < fōr- “to see”). This paper reviews past research on these forms and attempts to demonstrate that the = ikkonni derivation actually creates positive nouns.

This papers deals with the important Hurrian literary composition ‘the Song of Release’. Its first tablet KBo 32.11 is discussed and a new interpretation of lines iv 13´–14´ is proposed. Further, the tradition of these texts and that of the so-called ‘Parables’ often associated with them is examined.

This paper presents an edition of a new metro-mathematical table tablet of area measures from ED IIIb Zabalam.

The Middle Assyrian cuneiform tablet found at Kār-Tukultī-Ninurta has been classified as a kind of arrangement between king and provincial governor. Now, since a crucial word and line can be restored, the text may be commented on in more detail. It turns out to be the king’s commitment to prevent his troops from violating a neighbouring territory. Moreover, his competence in jurisdiction had been assigned to the governor, at least in special cases. Consequently, some ideas on Middle Assyrian administrative structures are put forward.

This paper concentrates on two groups of Mesopotamian foundation figurines bearing textile remains and impressions, one found at Tello (ancient Girsu), the other at Nippur (ca. 2100–2000 BCE). Addressing this material from the perspective of gender studies, two main topics are analysed. On the one hand, some aspects related to the production and consumption of the textiles adhering to some of the foundation figurines are addressed, as these facets are not usually mentioned when foundation deposits are analysed. On the other hand, the possible masculine or feminine identities of the figurines are considered. The article concludes with a discussion of the visibility of women’s work and the influence of Western gender preconceptions in the analysis of the archaeological record, particularly when considering foundation figurines.

In the following article, the pronominal morphology from four major ancient Anatolian languages (Hittite, Cuneiform Luwian, Hieroglyphic Luwian and Lycian) will be treated. It will be argued that apart from a few elements of unclear origin, the pronouns in these languages are for the most part built up of morphemes that can be traced back to Proto-Indo-European.

A Neo-Assyrian royal stele from Dūr-Katlimmu, modern Tell Šaiḫ Ḥamad in Syria, bears two cuneiform inscriptions, one in the name of Adad-nērārī III of Assyria (r. 810–783 BC), the other in the name of Nergal-ēreš, governor of the Assyrian province of Raṣappa. Both inscriptions concern the god Salmānu and his temple at Dūr-Katlimmu for whose reconstruction and refurbishment Adad-nērārī and Nergal-ēreš take credit.

The gloss phenomenon is one aspect of the Amarna letters that has attracted much interest from scholars. Most studies on these glosses have focused on linguistic features, while comparatively few have attempted to understand their cultural background. Based on the identification of a number of glosses that appear to be unnecessary from a functional point of view, this paper tentatively postulates that these types of glosses could be elements that scribes extracted from lexical lists that they had used in their training with the purpose of hinting at their professional background.

This article argues that the Anatolian hieroglyphic script, which is generally thought to have been an invention of the second half of the second millennium BCE, has its origins already in the late third/early second millennium BCE. The argument that Anatolian hieroglyphs are much older than hitherto assumed is based on a wide array of evidence, such as (signs on) seals and textual data from both Anatolia and the Aegean. These data imply that Anatolian hieroglyphs, like virtually any other writing system, started out as a simple pictographic script used for basic economic and administrative records and over time developed into a full-fledged writing system, rather than being ‘invented’ in the Hittite Period. It is demonstrated that the enigmatic iṣurtum -documents found in Old Assyrian texts refer to documents written in Anatolian hieroglyphs, similar to the GIŠ.HUR/ UṢURTUM/gulzattar documents in the Hittite Period. These documents, which have not been preserved because they were written on the perishable material wood, contained those types of texts that are conspicuously absent from the Old Assyrian and Hittite Periods. Since the Anatolians already had a script of their own, the cuneiform script never became firmly rooted within Anatolian society, and its usage was restricted to certain domains. This would explain why the cuneiform script was introduced (and subsequently abandoned) twice in Bronze Age Anatolia, whereas the Anatolian hieroglyphs continued to be used well into the first millennium BCE.

The composition known as the Verse Account is a polemical poem about Nabû-nā’id’s (Nabonidus’) evil reign composed after Cyrus’ conquest in 539 BC. In a well-known passage, the text mentions two local dignitaries by name: Zēria, the administrator ( šatammu ) of the Esagil temple of Marduk in Babylon, and Rēmūt, the royal secretary ( zazakku ). The current interpretation of this passage holds that these two men are despised by the author(s) of the Verse Account for having supported Nabû-nā’id’s heretical policies. This article challenges this interpretation and argues that Zēria and Rēmūt are pictured positively, as collaborators of Cyrus, the conqueror and liberator of Babylon.

Zusammenfassung Im vorliegenden Beitrag lege ich dar, dass die üblicherweise mit ARHA transliterierte luwische Hieroglyphe *216, die in ihrer Funktion dem hethitischen Präverb arḫa entspricht, die Lesung /axxa/ hat. Luwisch /axxa/ „weg“ ist mit hethitisch arḫa ursprünglich verwandt und wird in keilschriftlicher Überlieferung bisweilen mit aḫḫa wiedergegeben. Einige luwische Lexeme, die bisher ohne überzeugende Etymologie geblieben sind, lassen sich als Sekundärbildungen mit dem Morphem /axxa/ erklären.