Oxford Editions of Cuneiform Texts – serie

Mathematics was integral to Mesopotamian scribal culture: indeed, writing was invented towards the end of the fourth millennium BC for the express purpose of recording numerical information. By the beginning of the second millennium the earliest known body of 'pure' mathematics was one of the key elements of scribal training, and is thus pivotal to our understanding of the educational practices and intellectual history of ancient Mesopotamia. The main body of this book is a mathematical and philological discussion of the two hundred technical constants, or `coefficients', found in early second millennium mathematics. Their names and mathematical functions are established, leading to improved interpretations of several large mathematical topics. The origins of many coefficients - and much of the more practical mathematics - are traced to late third millennium accounting and quantity surveying practices. Finally, the coefficients are used to examine some aspects of mathematics education in early Mesopotamia.

Texts from Hellenistic Babylonia in the Ashmolean Museum

Late Babylonian Texts in the Ashmolean Museum

Letters from Old Babylonian Kish presents the primary publication of previously unstudied letters from the Old Babylonian Period. Drawing on internal and external evidence, the volume illuminates connections between these letters and other tablets housed in collections in Europe and the USA. The result is the reconstruction of a virtual archive of more than 200 letters from Old Babylonian Kish. Until at least 1600 BC, the compiled archive represents the largest group of related letters from southern Mesopotamia. Although these letters moved into various museums through the antiquities market in the early 1900s, many remained unstudied and unpublished, despite providing many pristine examples of personal and professional correspondence. The study of scribal hands and habits has been aided by the gathering of so many related letters, allowing the identification of four distinct scribal hands. The volume includes an extensive introduction, treating Old Babylonian epistolography and scribal hands.

Administration and Economy in Early Babylonian Society presents an analytical edition of 65 previously unpublished cuneiform tablets and bullae from the Ur III period (2112-2004 BC), currently held in the Theodore M. Hesburgh Library at the University of Notre Dame. Carefully transliterated, translated, and annotated, these texts are made available for the first time, offering fresh material for research not only in Ur III studies and Assyriology but also in economic history, social anthropology, and the study of early bureaucratic systems.The tablets provide detailed records of Ur III administrative practices, economic organization, and daily operations. They cover agricultural management, including field maintenance, irrigation systems, and the production of crops from orchards and date groves. Additional documents shed light on livestock administration, craft production, labour allocation (including lists of workers and their supervisors), food preparation, and the transportation of goods. Collectively, they reveal the intricate mechanisms that sustained one of Mesopotamia's earliest centralized states.Beyond institutional structures, these texts illuminate the lives of individuals--scribes recording transactions, overseers managing workforces, and labourers fulfilling their duties--offering a human dimension to our understanding of Ur III society. The volume combines rigorous philological analysis with historical interpretation, ensuring reliability for specialists while remaining accessible to non-specialists interested in comparative studies of early complex societies.