Volume 45, Issue 2

The Old Babylonian schoolmasters used the literary form of the dialogue to compose texts that were conceived as didactic material to improve the Sumerian speaking skills of their pupils and to teach them specific moral values. Some of these compositions can be labeled as school-disputes based on to their content and were probably performed at school. The ends of the school-disputes Enkiḫeĝal and Enkitalu and Ĝirinisa and Enkimanšum are particularly interesting because they provide some insight into how the schoolmasters dealt with quarreling students. In this respect Enkiḫeĝal und Enkitalu stands out for its challenge of corporal punishment. In Ĝirinisa and Enkimanšum one can note that school discipline implies a fraternal attitude between students. This fraternal attitude presupposed and reinforced the scribe’s self-confidence to form a cohesive cultural community.

A relief from the palace of Šarru-ukīn (Sargon) at Dūr-Šarrukīn/Ḫorsābād depicts the Ḫaldi temple in Muṣaṣir. Hitherto this representation has been interpreted as a special form of an Urartean temple not otherwise attested. However, the representation of the Ḫaldi temple in Muṣaṣir fits the pattern of Urartian susi -temples if we assume that the Assyrian artist intended to show the peculiarities of the foreign temple by pulling the sides forward and attaching them to the front in order to exhibit its outer decoration and roof.

This article offers an edition of the tablet CBS 12590 (HAV 5, pl. 7, VIII), which contains a Sumerian širgida -hymn to the god Lulal dating to the Old Babylonian period. An introduction discussing Lulal provides an overview of this little-known god’s personal characteristics, divine roles, and local cult, especially as they are represented in literary and liturgical compositions (with further evidence provided by god lists and litanies, royal inscriptions, lexical lists, and administrative documents). A particularly striking feature of the composition is the number of rather specific potential intertextual references to the imagery of other gods including Ninurta (and the composition Ninurta’s Exploits), Ninĝirsu, and Utu, and possibly even the mortal king Šulgi.

This contribution explores two exceptional motifs in Late Uruk glyptic that have been identified as demons. Introducing the concept of pareidolia in Mesopotamian archaeology, a different perception of these motifs is suggested, according to which they might present representations of two entangled human beings.

This paper presents a new Akkadian text from the Iraq Museum with a magico-poetic formula to calm a crying baby.

The paper deals with lexicalisation of focus particles - pat and imma in Hittite, i.e. the use of the particles as word building means of deriving different classes of indefinite pronouns. Whereas the particles are shown to lexicalize differently ( imma is a marker of free choice indefinite pronouns and - pat occurs disproportionately often with demonstrative pronouns), there is an overlap of their lexicalisation in the free choice sphere.

There is much controversy over the question of the syntactic alignment of Hattian. A resolution is complicated by the fact that Hattian has a poor case morphology. This investigation into the functions of the prefixes wa a = and eš= (with various allomorphs), which occur both as plural prefixes to nouns and as verbal prefixes expressing third person plural actants, attempts to resolve the issue on the basis of a detailed study of the relevant material. As it turns out, Hattian has a split system, with an accusative base in verbal forms that do not contain the prefix tu= and an ergative base in verbal forms that do contain that prefix. Intransitive subject, transitive subject and object are all morphosyntactically distinguished, so that it can be argued that Hattian has a split three-way system of alignment. This complicated system is typologically similar to alignment in Sumerian.

This paper addresses the possibilities for further philological and linguistic studies of the Hattian text sources that will be feasible within the next few years. A digital searchable corpus of Hattian texts, in combination with a digital corpus of the Hittite texts, would open up new venues of research. These corpora will facilitate lexical, morphological and phonological studies as well as the reconstruction of text compositions with Hattian passages and of the tablets on which they were inscribed. It is hoped that the digital corpora will also aid in the potential identification of hitherto unrecognized correspondences between Hattian and Hittite texts.

This paper provides a linguistic re-analysis of the toponyms ending in ° šna in Anatolian cuneiform texts. It argues that due to phonological reasons not all of them can be explained with a Hittite suffix as it is usually done and a similar Hattian suffix fits better. The toponyms with the Hattian suffix provide the first evidence that Hattian was once spoken south of the Kızılırmak river. As a by-product, new etymologies for some Hittite words and toponyms as well as an extended Palaic speaking territory are suggested.