Journal of Cuneiform Studies Supplemental Series – serie

The occurrence of textual variation is a significant but frequently neglected aspect of the study of Sumerian literary compositions. The correct evaluation of textual variants and the proper understanding of how and why they occur are essential to producing reliable editions of such texts. Such explorations also provide invaluable evidence for the written transmission of Sumerian literary works and a wealth of data for assessing aspects of Sumerian grammar. Drawing from a detailed analysis of the different types of textual variants that occur in the numerous duplicates of a group of ten compositions known collectively as the Decad, this book aims to provide a much needed critical methodology for interpreting textual variation in the Sumerian literary corpus which can be applied to editing and analyzing these compositions with improved accuracy.

The material remains and the more than 23,500 cuneiform tablets unearthed at the site of Kültepe (ancient Kanesh) shed light on social, political, and economic aspects of the Middle Bronze age (ca. 2000–1700 years BC) in central Anatolia, but also in Upper Mesopotamia. The rich textual record provides ample information on a very sophisticated supraregional market economy, representing one of the best-documented historical cases of long-distance trade in the ancient world. Although the site was first excavated in 1893, followed by intermittent excavations between 1906 and 2005, modern scientific and interdisciplinary excavations have only been undertaken since 2006. The new scientific research at Kültepe-Kanesh has already begun amassing new data and providing us with a unique opportunity to generate new perspectives and to challenge previous models and assumptions about, for example, trade, colonialism, ethnicity, art, religious ideas, identity, and patterns of social, political, and economic organization in the Near East during the Middle Bronze Age. A primary goal of this special volume is to integrate the work of scholars in archaeology, archaeometry, bioarchaeology, geoarchaeology, and history to develop a new synthetic research paradigm for investigating issues of trade, colonialism, ethnicity, art, identity, and urbanization in the Near East in a unified fashion.

The 145 tablets presented in this volume are among a larger group of 302 tablets confiscated by U.S. customs, and which were being stored in a World Trade Center building when it was destroyed on 9/11.The 145 tablets, which come from an unknown site near Nippur in Southern Iraq, are the documents of a high official named Aradmu that detail routine agricultural operations, including receipts and grain loans. The group was repatriated to Iraq in late 2010, after the tablets were conserved and the author had completed his study.The editions offered in this volume complete an incredible journey for the tablets and the stories they hold.

From the late third millennium BCE on, the adventures of Gilgamesh were well known throughout Babylonia and Assyria, and the discovery of fragmentary Akkadian-language fragments of versions of his tale at Bogazkoy, Ugarit, Emar, and Megiddo in Palestine demonstrates that tales of the hero's exploits had reached the periphery of the cuneiform world already in the Late Bronze Age.In addition to the manuscripts in the Hittite language recounting Gilgamesh's adventures, two Akkadian versions and fragmentary Hurrian renderings have turned up at the Hittite capital Hattusa. This volume offers an edition of the material from Bogazkoy, which has been of particular importance to modern scholars in reconstructing the epic and analyzing its development, since it documents a period in the history of the narrative's progressive restructuring and elaboration for which very few textual witnesses have yet been recovered from Mesopotamia itself. And it is this very Middle Babylonian or Kassite period to which scholarly consensus assigns the composition of the final, canonical, version of the epic.

Includes 36 b/w illustrations. The Ur III period (2112-2004 BCE) was one of the more significant periods in the history of ancient Mesopotamia for modern scholarship and for native cultural traditions and historiography as well. The centralized patrimonial bureaucracy of the time is documented by almost a hundred thousand known documents, and this was when much of what we know as classical Sumerian literature was first initiated. We would not have so many published texts at our disposal if it were not for the tireless efforts of Marcel Sigrist of the Ecole Biblique in Jerusalem, whose scholarship and generosity are celebrated in this volume in twenty-seven essays by an international group of grateful experts on Ur III studies. The subjects range from the publication of new administrative and magical texts, as well as a new piece of the Sumerian King List, to studies of merchants, land tenure, court records, royal concubines, scribes, foreign bodyguards, and even of cuisine.