Nisaba – serie

In 1914, William M. Nesbit published his dissertation at Columbia University on 30 archival texts from the Third Dynasty of Ur. Now, more than a century later, the remaining tablets in his collection have been recovered and, thanks to the generosity of the Nesbit family, were made available for publication by David I. Owen. The majority of texts published here is from Puzriš-Dagan (Drehem) with some from Nippur and Umma. They originate from the earliest clandestine finds at those sites. The 98 texts, including a re-edition of the previously published tablets, are provided with a catalogue, hand-copies, selected photographs, along with transliterations, translations and comments, thus providing an important addition to the extensive corpus of Ur III texts from this important period in Mesopotamian history.

The period between the accession of Nabonasser, in 747 B.C.E., and the accession of Nabopolasser, in 625 B.C.E., was a period of significant stability for the city of Babylon, due in large part to the projection of Assyrian power in the region. During this transitional period, increased economic activity throughout Babylonia resulted in an increase in the amount of written evidence. And the legal and administrative texts that have thus far come to light are, in the words of J. A. Brinkman, “a mine of information for researchers interested in demography, social institutions, economic history, and even ancient technology.” In this volume, John Nielsen provides an index of the personal names found on texts from this period. As such, the index is a valuable supplement to the Prosopography of the Neo-Assyrian Empire project (Helsinki). Information presented in the book is modeled on the Helsinki project’s publications. The index includes comprehensive cross-references to the CAD, Stamm’s Namengebung, the Helsinki PNAE indexes, Hölscher’s Personennamen, and Knut Tallqvist’s Neubabylonisch Namenbuch. Nielsen’s prosopographical index adds a major new resource to the study of the Neo-Babylonian period.