Volume 109, Issue 2

Publication of 18 Ur III texts from the confiscated texts in the Iraq Museum which pertain to two dossiers, centering on the individuals Šulgi-mudaḫ and Šara-dān.

In a recent paper, K. De Graef (2018a) discussed two exceptional seal impressions on tablets from late Sukkalmaḫ Susa and early Kidinuid Haft Tepe. One text carrying the first of the pertinent seals is MDP 23, 321+322, a Susa tablet recording a trial over landed property. Following up De Graef’s study, the present communication re-examines the case and argues that the text deals with a single trial, which most likely was a primary court hearing. Certain exceptional features of the text deserve attention, including the institution of brotherhood, a unique citation of law, and an impressive judicial panel.

Publication and edition of two tablets from the library in the Ebabbar Temple of Sippar, a manuscript of the ‘Babylonian Poem of the Righteous Sufferer’ ( Ludlul bēl nēmeqi ) Tablet III, and a manuscript of the long prayer to Marduk ‘Furious Lord’ (also known as ‘Marduk 1’).

The present article gives a new edition and analysis of ‘The Hunter and the Asses’ (LKA 62) and discusses its political, historical and literary setting. We argue for the identification of the text as a paean, glorifying the campaigns of Shalmaneser III to the west against the coalition of 12 kings led by the king of Damascus.

This article discusses the origins of a group of four Hittite OS tablets, which share some unique and peculiar features with respect to their shape, spelling conventions and palaeography. It argues that these four tablets are the oldest documents of the Hittite corpus, and that they were not created in Ḫattuša, but have been imported from elsewhere. Originally, they belonged to an older writing tradition, predating the establishment of Ḫattuša as the Hittite capital. This implies that the royal tablet collections in Ḫattuša do not reflect the very first beginnings of Hittite cuneiform, but only the start of a royal administration there. The typical Hittite ductus was already created in the 18th century BCE – in Kuššara, Nēša or elsewhere in Anatolia.

This article presents a recently-found inscribed stele belonging to the Urartian king Argišti I (ca. 785/80–756 BC). The stele was erected to commemorate the inauguration of an irrigation channel running off the Dainalitini Stream (modern Deliçay), north of Lake Van in Eastern Turkey. The inscription on this stele is important, both for localizing the Dainalitini Stream mentioned in Urartian texts, as well as understanding sacrificial rituals in agricultural contexts.

This paper draws on the preliminary results of the QADIS survey project, conducted by the University of Bologna and the Iraqi State Board of Antiquities and Heritage since 2016 in the Qadisiyah province. The project addresses phenomena related to anthropogenic transformation of landscapes in a region that was at the core of the early Mesopotamian urbanization process. Building upon the seminal work conducted by R. McC. Adams in the 1960 s and 1970 s, we implemented an integrated documentation technique to reconstruct at regional levels the changes in the dense network of human settlements and artificial water infrastructures characterizing the evolution of this archaeological landscape over time. The aim of the article is that of providing a finer-grained regional picture of 4 th and 3 rd millennium BC urban developments which can be useful for better conceptualizing the scale and pace of early Mesopotamian urbanism.

The Gundük rock relief ensemble in a cave located in the northern highlands of Iraq is probably the oldest known example of its kind in the Near East. First reported in the 19th century but never accurately documented, unfortunately two of the three known reliefs were intentionally damaged beyond repair in the decades to follow. This article presents a new art-historical analysis of the preserved third relief as well as a fourth previously unknown carving, based on recent photogrammetric capture. The images can be dated to the Early Dynastic III or Early Akkadian period with motifs, stylistic details and a composition obviously deriving from then-contemporaneous art in southern Mesopotamia.