Volume 50, Issue 2

This article presents an unpublished cuneiform tablet measuring 13.5 × 14.0 × 1.5 cm. that has been confiscated and now bears the accession number I.M. 204249. According to its palaeography, form, content, prosopography and the mu – iti dating formula, it originates from the Umma region and dates to the Old Akkadian period. It contains a list of different field types of varying sizes leased to a large number of people and hence lends itself to a study of agricultural land terminology.

The practice of annulling or destroying written documents is well documented during the III Dynasty of Ur (2112–2004 BC), where several documents record the expression “kišib PN zi-re-dam,” the sealed document is to be annulled/destroyed. This practice is recorded in three different types of administrative documents: loan texts, “orders” requesting the annulment of another document, and documents whose annulment takes place only after another document has arrived. The aim of this article is to study the documents that record this practice and to provide a description of the administrative procedures related to the annulment of documents during the III Dynasty of Ur.

Much has been written of the events concerning the Egyptian, Mittanian, and Hittite presence in the northern Levant during the so-called ʿAmārna Period. Decades of work from excellent scholars have established that the Egyptians elected two cities to be their “capitals” in the region, centres from where they could establish their control over the territory of modern Lebanon: Ṣumur on the ʿAkkār Plain, and Kumidi in the Biqāʿ (Beqaa) Valley. Many points remain relatively unclear, such as the succession of events in the region, the developments of war, and the reasons why the Egyptians decided to create a second centre in Kumidi, when they already controlled Ṣumur. This paper reanalyses the data at our disposal and reconstructs the diachronic succession of events related to the two centres, arguing that Kumidi became an Egyptian centre only after Ṣumur had fallen prey to Abdi-Aširta of Amurru.

The article presents an edition of the Old Babylonian Sumerian Eršema “In heaven, at evening” according to the tablet MS 3406, published here for the first time, and parallels. The Eršema describes Inana lamenting her losses and the capture of her spouse Dumuzi.

The present study offers a first comprehensive, quantifiable overview of the geographical extent and scale of the cuneiform corpus. Though one of the oldest and longest-lived scripts in history, the sheer size of this corpus, being among the largest discrete bodies of written source material from the pre-modern world, is seldom properly appreciated. We review and evaluate past quantitative assessments of the corpus and current levels of catalogue digitisation and integration, pointing to gaps in general catalogues and principal issues relating to the quantification and interrogation of textual sources at the corpus-level. Combining a newly developed open access spatial index of c. 600 locations from across Europe, Asia, and Africa where cuneiform texts have been found with a quantitative survey of reported finds from scholarly literature, we then proceed to discuss the formation of the cuneiform corpus as an archaeological artefact. Aided by an extremely broad diachronic and diatopic outlook on a uniquely large body of written source material, this study offers an innovative and novel perspective on written corpora as archaeological artefacts.

This paper discusses a small dossier of four documents concerning a house that stood in Neo-Babylonian Uruk. These documents, among which are two previously unpublished texts, offer a rare opportunity to follow the history of one property and one neighborhood over a period of more than half a century. Apart from supplying unique long-term data on property prices in Uruk, the dossier provides insight into various social and political changes that shaped Uruk’s urban landscape in the late seventh and early sixth centuries BC. In particular, it contributes to the evidence concerning a dramatic purge of Uruk elites that took place in the middle of Nabû-kudurrī-uṣur (Nebuchadnezzar) II’s reign.

The heading “vanity theme” has been attributed to various Sumerian and Akkadian literary compositions that would represent a form of wisdom critical of traditional values. The present article revises those compositions arguing that they do not propound a critical view of traditional wisdom but simply reflect on the finitude of human nature. Critical wisdom only surfaces in a limited number of compositions mostly attested in Middle Babylonian sources. The vanity theme is not only tied to critical views of traditional values but is a flexible literary motif that was adapted to different contexts and compositions.

The Egibi archive contains a group of texts concerning the tax farming activities of Marduk-nāṣir-apli, son of Itti-Marduk-balāṭu, the head of the Egibi family in the third generation (521–487 BCE). This group of texts includes documents that refer to various taxes, such as ilku and qaštu , mostly in the form of receipts, as well as a dossier of a rab hanše , Bēl-erība, son of Kalbāya, descendant of Šumu-libši, who was closely involved in the collection of ilku . A detailed analysis and contextualization of these texts reveal the ilku taxation processes, and the roles of the rab hanšê Bēl-erība and the tax farmer Marduk-nāṣir-apli in these processes. These texts also add more evidence for the taxation on the military fiefs and qaštu -tax in Babylon.