Volume 106, Issue 1

Abstract: The two inscribed artifacts discussed in this article were excavated by C. L. Woolley during the seventh field campaign (1928–1929) at Tell al-Muqayyar, ancient Ur, Iraq. The objects were shipped to the British Museum of London in 1930 and 1935 and have never been published in print. These items are presented and analysed here through a review of their textual information, archaeological context, and associated material culture, using unpublished data from the Ur collection kept in the British Museum. This paper is part of a collaborative research project aiming at re-contextualizing the archaic texts from Ur. The contextual reconstruction presented here draws upon a doctoral research carried out by G. Benati at the University of Turin (Italy), aimed at re-analysing the stratigraphy and materials from the Early Dynastic period excavated at Ur on the basis of the field records and objects kept in museum collections (Benati 2014). The archaic texts from Ur are currently being studied by C. Lecompte, who recently published a group of archaic tablets kept in the British Museum of London (Lecompte 2013). The authors wish to thank the staff of the Middle East Department of the BM for assistance and permission to study the Ur collection. In particular, we would like to thank Jon Taylor and Birger Helgestad for providing us the image used for fig. 4 and for permission to publish it. Information on the finds from Ur excavations can now be found in the Ur Digitization Project online database (http://www.ur-online.org/). We wish also to express our gratitude to Anne Christine Paar and Emmert Clevenstine for correcting our English.

Abstract: In 2015 the Italian Archaeological Expedition to Niĝin (Southern Iraq) started the exploration of the site of Tell Surghul (Dhi Qar province). Excavations concentrated on two main operations (Areas A and B), while a survey was conducted along the western border of the site (Area C). In the present article, the epigraphic findings (inscribed cones and bricks of Gudea) from the south and south-east areas of Mound A in Area A are analysed: inscriptions document the building activity of Gudea with the construction of the temple Sirara for the goddess Nanshe that probably occupied the top of Mound A.

Abstract: The Rosen Vocabulary is an Old Babylonian bilingual text. Through an edition of this text, I argue that the ad-hoc mixed vocabularies known from the Old Babylonian period feature citations or allusions to literary compositions as well as subsequent analogous expressions, both in Sumerian and in Akkadian.

Abstract: The close examination of a large previously unedited literary fragment from Old Babylonian Ur reveals that it is a letter-prayer or Gottesbrief to Ninšubur.

Abstract: Two anti-witchcraft prescriptions from the late second millennium BCE are edited for the first time: a fragment from Ḫattuša (HT 75 = BM 108557) and a previously unpublished fragment from Nippur (CBS 11059). The piece from Ḫattuša joins an important therapeutic/prophylactic compilation that has first-millennium duplicates from Assur and Kalḫu, while the manuscript from Nippur, which has duplicates from Ḫattuša and Nineveh, illustrates the early stabilization of a ritual tradition that is later formulated as a measure against a type of witchcraft called zikurudû , “throat-cutting” Abbreviations not found in the Reallexikon der Assyriologie und Vorderasiatischen Archäologie include: CMAwR 1 = Abusch/Schwemer 2011; CMAwR 2 = Abusch/Schwemer forthcoming; SANER = Studies in Ancient Near Eastern Records; STMAC = Science, Technology, and Medicine in Ancient Cultures. The Trustees of the British Museum and Steve Tinney and Grant Frame, curators of the Babylonian Section, University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, kindly gave permission to publish tablets in their collections. I am also very grateful to Daniel Schwemer, Tzvi Abusch, and the editors/referees of ZA, all of whom provided valuable comments and suggestions. .

Abstract: This article presents a statistical analysis of signs of the CV type and their values as used for stop consonants in Alalaḫ VII documents. Comparing the Alalaḫ VII syllabary with those of OAkk, OAss and Mari, I show that it had not been systematized by the time of the city’s destruction, and that one cannot speak of an adequate written representation for all voiced, voiceless and emphatic stops in Alalaḫ VII. Nevertheless, the syllabary does show a tendency towards a rational distribution of the signs used. This research also demonstrates that it may be misleading to consider Alalaḫ VII the direct source of borrowing of Hittite cuneiform.

Abstract: Der vorliegende Aufsatz beschreibt die Erforschung eines wenig bekannten Felsreliefs, das in der Schlucht Darband-i Ramkan am östlichen Rand der Rania-Ebene über dem Kleinen Zab angebracht wurde. Bei diesem stark verwitterten Bild handelt es sich um die Darstellung eines Triumphators über einem besiegten Feind, die vermutlich im 19.–18. Jahrhundert v. Chr. entstanden ist.