Volume 40, Issue 1

The Hittite cuneiform tablet fragments from Boğazköy / Ḫattusa presented here have been selected from among the group Bo 4658 to Bo 5000, to appear in a forthcoming edition. These nine fragments constitute joins or duplicates to previously known texts, including a fragment apparently duplicating the Kuruštama Treaty (CTH 134), a duplicate to Tudḫaliya IV’s Instructions and Loyalty Oath Imposition for Lords, Princes and Courtiers (CTH 255), a duplicate to Maštigga’s Ritual against Domestic Quarrel (CTH 404) as well as several fragments of further rituals, festivals and cult inventory texts.

The present article explores the agreement patterns for conjoined singular nouns and pronouns in Hittite, based on a collection of ca. 270 examples from Old to Late New Hittite original manuscripts. It turns out that while in the domain of the attribute one always finds plural resolution of the target, in the other domains there are two different patterns based on a semantic distinction between controllers of animate and inanimate reference.While the former can (but need not) show resolution, the latter’s targets usually agree only with the nearest noun of the coordinated controllers, hence appearing in the singular.The paper also shows that a distinction has to be made between real coordination and two similar syntactic phenomena, i.e. noun phrases in an OR-conjunction (which always trigger singular agreement) and sequences of similar controllers in different clauses (which always trigger plural agreement).

The article presents a stone slab inscribed with a fragmentary annalistic text written in the name of the Assyrian king Sargon II (Šarru-ukin, 722-705 BCE). Based on photos of the slab recently posted on the internet, the author provides an edition of the text and discusses its historical significance.The main topic of the preserved portion of the text is the anti-Assyrian rebellion instigated by Yau-bi’di of Hamath at the beginning of Sargon’s reign, an uprising in which Samaria, Damascus, and a few other Western cities participated as well. The depiction on the slab, the recarving it experienced at some point, and the question where the slab might have been found are briefly examined as well.

This paper addresses the idiomatic phrase ana appi šūṣû, attested only in Neo-Assyrian, Neo- and Late Babylonian letters. Literally meaning ‘to make go out of the nose’, the phrase is commonly translated according to the specific contexts in which it appears. The aim of this paper is to establish a consistent translation in its figurative sense. For this purpose, we first try to identify its function within the illocutionary act. Based on these findings and a detailed examination of the contents of the pertinent letters, an attempt is made to determine the connotative meaning of the phrase.

Much ink has been spilled on the examination of Mesopotamian conceptions of the divine in the past, and the topic has received renewed attention in the present. The following article offers yet another synthetic analysis of the Mesopotamian divine sphere, amassing in one place a vast array of data and the scholarly assessments of that data. More particularly, after examining what constitutes a god in ancient Mesopotamia and the essential and characteristic qualities of Mesopotamian deities, the article attempts to sort the divine sphere, focusing on the relationship between the various beings that populate the divine world and between a single deity and its various aspects. However, although synthetic, the present contribution offers several new insights.Most prominently, it posits the concept of divine constellations as a model for understanding Mesopotamian deities, in which the major Mesopotamian deities are presented as a constellation of aspects that may be treated as (semi-)independent beings or as a unity depending on the context.

This article discusses the queens (mí.é.gal) of the Neo-Assyrian Empire from the ninth to the seventh century BC, focusing on their number and sequence, with the intent to clarify the vexed question whether there could be more than one queen simultaneously. There is no conclusive proof for such a practice. It is argued that the title of “queen” was connected to that of the king and that, when a new king ascended to the throne, his wife replaced the former holder of the title as queen. Moreover, the analysis of textual sources and archaeological data establishes that in at least three cases, there is no discernable correlation between the queen and the mother of the crown prince.

In this article it will be argued that in Old Hittite the signs TA and DA are not used interchangeably, as is commonly believed, but in fact represented different sounds.The sign TA represents the value [ta], with a voiceless [t], whereas the sign DA can represent either the value [t ? a], with a glottalized [t ? ], or the value [da], with a voiced [d], depending on the environment. The values of these signs thus perfectly match their values in the Old Babylonian texts from Alalaḫ, in which TA represents ta (= [ta]) and DA can represent both ṭa (= [t ? a]) and da (= [da]).

In this paper four votive royal inscriptions from the Princeton University Library collection are published in transliteration, translation and hand copy.The inscriptions were written on nail-shaped cones and a barrel-shaped cylinder, and belong to Ur-Bau, Gudea, Sîn-kāšid and Nebuchadnezzar II, all of which have known parallels.

In an approach combining the analysis of key words with the prosopographical study of the relevant text sources, this article discusses the administration and processing of slaughter animals and their by-products in Ur III Puzriš-Dagan (Drehem). The study demonstrates that slaughter animals were administrated in a specialised government office with two subdivisions. One of these was responsible for the processing of the carcasses in the kitchens (Großküchen) of Puzriš-Dagan and elsewhere, the other for the utilisation of the skins and other by-products. The article includes discussions of the terms used for slaughter animals and their by-products as well as for the associated locations and officials.

The purpose of this study is to analyse the sources available for approximating percentages of casualties. Three case studies have been chosen due to the good availability of sources: the battles of Ḫaridu (877 B.C.), Ḫubuškia (859 B.C.) and Qarqar (853 B.C.). The study of the reliefs and annals describing these battles would indicate that in all three cases the Assyrians inflicted a (very) high percentage of casualties on their enemies, sometimes close to or over 50 %. However, when the historical context is considered it emerges that these figures cannot serve as a reliable record of the casualties.