Volume 115, Issue 1

The colophons of the archaic lexical lists, to which little attention has hitherto been paid, are re-edited and analyzed. Tablets with colophons are examined within their archaeological context, revealing clusters of lexical lists. Additionally, the colophons provide insights into the onomasticon and vocabulary of the Late Uruk and Jemdet Nasr periods. The lack of an unambiguous term for “scribe” and the occurrence of several professional designations not seemingly connected with writing raise questions about the training of scribes and the broader social organization of writing during those periods. We wish to thank Margarete van Ess, Kathryn Kelley, Szilvia Sövegjártó, and Konrad Volk for their suggestions. We wish also to express our gratitude to Christian W. Hess and A.-C. Parr for correcting our English and to Walther Sallaberger and Manfred Krebernik for their important and insightful observations. The archaic signs are cited following the publication by Green/Nissen in ZATU, as well as the sign list compiled by Englund available online at https://cdli.ox.ac.uk/wiki/doku.php?id=late_uruk_period.

TCL 15, 1 (AO 3024) is the only known manuscript of a Sumerian lament on the temples of Sud, the city-goddess of Šuruppak. Despite its excellent state of preservation, the text has received almost no attention since the (long outdated) edition of Witzel (1935). This article makes a fresh attempt to interpret the text, in light of recently discovered sources on the cults of Sud in the early Old Babylonian period.

This paper considers the form and structure of expressions of gratitude in the letters to the king edited in the SAA corpus. Minimal possible thanks as well as thanks appropriate for different occasions are identified. The different form of expressions of gratitude made by the king are posited to be the result of a power differential. Finally, the author considers the small number of thanks in the corpus to be the result of principles of reciprocity being taken seriously by the senders. The research for this paper was funded by the National Science Centre (NCN) Poland grant no. 2017/25/N/HS2/02797.

This paper publishes a finely-made quartzite Lamaštu plaque recently excavated at the Mašqi Gate in Nineveh. The plaque bears a complex iconography, which is thoroughly analysed, along with the Akkadian text of Pazuzu Standard Inscription B. Supported by other finds from the gate, an argument is presented that the location may have been home to a magician’s workshop.  Comparison with a number of previously published Lamaštu amulets leads to the conclusion that they share a common place of manufacture, which we accordingly designate the “Nineveh Elite Workshop.”

In contrast to the preceding centuries, women occupy a prominent place in the Late Babylonian Esagil archives, particularly in lists recording the expenditures of allocations. A close reading of theses attestations reveals that in comparison to earlier centuries, there was more female agency and mobility within the traditional Babylonian temple household. My thesis is that these new roles for women can be explained against their wider socio-economic background.

The nuntarriyašḫa- constitutes one of the most important festivals in the Hittite cultic calendar in the Empire Period. Along with its ‘twin’ spring festival of the an.dah.šum plant, the nuntarriyašḫa- , celebrated in autumn, belonged to the longest religious events of its time, spanning over 40 days. Much of the course of the festival remains in the dark, however. This paper presents recent developments in the study of the outline tablets of the nuntarriyašḫa- , which offer an abbreviated course of the entire festival. New joins are presented, previous propositions of joins revaluated, and the outline-tablets as a particular sub-genre are critically discussed.