Sources from the Ancient Near East – serie

The Lagash Umma border dispute is the earliest well - documented interstate conflict known. From about 2500 to 2350 B.C.the Sumerian city - states of Lagash and Umma contested the right to exploit a tract of land on their common border, and their dispute is documented by a series of inscriptions filled with claims and counterclaims, and some times vivid descriptions of battles between the two states. This volume makes available for the first time, complete English translations of all documents relevant to these events. After a brief introduction to early civilization and political organization in Baby lonia, the documents are described in detail. There follows an exposition of the difficulties involved in trying to reconstruct the chronology and the geography of the conflict, and the philological problems that hamper our understanding of the documents. The actual reconstruction of the 150 year struggle is then undertaken by critically examining the sources for each episode. An attempt is made to account for both the high degree of agreement among the individual sources, and the occa sional glaring discrepancies. Documents from outside the corpus of texts relating the border conflict and archeological evidence, are used to set the Lagash-Umma dispute in the broader context of third millennium Mesopotamian history. Special attention is paid to the art and language of ancient historical narratives and the limits they place on the nature of the historical data that can be elicited from a close reading of the inscrip tions. The volume is intended both for specialists and for teachers and students of ancient history in general.

The "dynastic chronicle" here termed the Harab myth (CT XL VI, no, 43) presents a new theme in Mesopotamian mythology, that of succeeding generations of gods who come to power through parricide and live in incest with mother, sister, or both. This copy of the text is Late Babylonian with a mixture of Assyrian and Babylonian forms. Transliteration and translation are followed by an extensive commentry which discusses several motifs germane to the reconstruction and interpretation of the myth. Sources, background and cross-cultural comparisons are also provided. The Harab myth may be briefly described as a "genealogy of cosmic moral."

Namburbi is the title of a group of typical Babylonian incantations, used to "undo" or avert portended evil. Consisting of both rituals and prayers, they provide a response to the observed events taken by the Mesopotamians to be signs of future happenings; thus they are the practical correlate of the "omen texts," which list such portents and their significance. The fascicle by Caplice includes a long introduction, which explains the nature of the texts and their ritual Sitz im Leben, and the translation, with notes, of 14 representative texts, ranging from a Ritual for the Evil of a Snake to a Ritual to Secure Brisk Trade.