Journal of Cuneiform Studies

Building on the first edition by Alhena Gadotti and Alexandra Kleinerman (), this article provides a fresh look at the Old Babylonian Sumerian literary text commonly referred to as Eduba R, with translation and commentary. In this composition a pupil describes in some detail how a regular day at the scribal school evolves. The text employs many unusual words and phrases and quite a few passages still remain unclear. Some of the unplaced fragments, edited separately by Gadotti and Kleinerman in their edition, may now be placed securely in the reconstructed text.

The archives discovered in the palaces of Syria and upper Mesopotamia, dating to the Middle Bronze Age, show that many women worked in these buildings. This article brings together data from the sites of Mari (Tell Hariri), Qaṭṭarā (Tell Rimah), Ašnakkum (Chagar Bazar), Tuttul (Tell Bi’a), and Alalah (Tell Açana) to compile an inventory of the female occupations that were carried out there. The fields represented are housekeeping, kitchen work (including food accounting), gatekeeping, and childcare. Except for nannies, most of these occupations have a male counterpart. Among the different types of sources, the ration lists provide a hierarchy of occupations and within occupations.

This article consists of an edition of the unique, hitherto unpublished balag MAH 16066. Three “narrative” kirugu sections originally totaling 70 lines are followed by an originally 110-line litany that, as shown in a synoptic table, is parallel at several points to at least nine other Old Babylonian second millennium BCE liturgical texts. The composition appears to be associated with a concrete ceremony. As interesting as the core text is the closing line, found also in other balags, with its benediction built on the construction šùd(u)-bi … gi₄-gi₄ to invoke the blessing deities named in the litany.

The Late Assyrian tablet LKA 76 (VAT 13839) from Assur is inscribed with two bilingual Sumerian-Akkadian texts, possibly incantations for rituals, that are concerned with prominent cities in southern Mesopotamia. The obverse is inscribed with a unique composition in which entities calling themselves the “Sons of Nippur” declare their affiliation with the city of Nippur and its deities. The composition inscribed on the reverse, known to have been incorporated into the apotropaic series bīt mēseri, consists of anecdotes in the lives of four apkallu-sages of human descent. The two compositions bridge the purported origins of Mesopotamian scholarly wisdom in the divine realm with its contemporary utilization among ritual experts.

In Hittite, various verbs with a stem šaku(u̯a)-/šakuu̯ai- have been identified. These include the verb šakuu̯ai- “to see,” as well as three verbs of which the meaning is less evident: one (CHD šaku(u̯a)-/šakuu̯ai- A) referring to a type of penalty, one (CHD šaku(u̯a)-/šakuu̯ai- B) which is usually taken to mean “to moisten (?)” or “to soak(?),” and one (CHD šakuu̯ai- D) of which the meaning is unknown. In this article, it will be argued that the verbs šaku(u̯a)-/šakuu̯ai- A and B are actually one and the same verb with the meaning “to plant,” “to stab,” or “to impale.” This new interpretation not only elucidates some thus far opaque attestations of the verb šaku(u̯a)-/šakuu̯ai-, but also improves our understanding of Hittite corporal punishments.

This article is a study of the place of dream interpretation in key Mesopotamian texts, principally in the Sumerian Cylinders of Gudea, Curse of Agade, Dumuzi’s Dream, and the Akkadian Standard Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh. In these texts, when the protagonist receives prophetic dreams, he then seeks out a dream-interpreter, usually a woman related to or close to the dreamer. Within the Epic of Gilgamesh, this position is also filled by Enkidu, who interprets Gilgamesh’s dreams as well as his own. Enkidu’s interpretation of his own dream is unusual but not unique, as Narām-Sîn showcases a similar ability in the Curse of Agade. This discussion is set alongside a consideration of the female dream interpreter (^munusensi or šāʾiltu) as attested outside of the literary sphere. Though attestations to the female dream interpreter are limited, they still far outnumber any references to the women within more technical divinatory contexts, such as the proposed female equivalent to the diviner (bārû), the bārītu.

Following the recent debate on the dating of the Broken Obelisk, which is commonly believed to have been composed in the reign of Aššur-bēl-kala, the present article provides a comprehensive review of the issues pertinent to the dating of this Assyrian inscription, as well as related topics such as the date of the Assyrian calendar reform and the Giricano archive. The results reveal that the Broken Obelisk should be attributed to Tiglath-pileser I rather than Aššur-bēl-kala. The Assyrian calendar reform occurred probably sometime between the thirty-first year (possibly the thirty-third year) to the thirty-sixth year of the reign of Tiglath-pileser I. The Broken Obelisk was composed sometime in the fourth decade of Tiglath-pileser’s reign after this calendar reform, representing the latest version of his annals known to date. The Giricano archive also dates from late in his reign. Many of the events that have been dated to the early years of Aššur-bēl-kala’s reign, such as the payment of tribute to Assyria by an Egyptian king, took place during the reign of Tiglath-pileser I.

This paper relates how in 1975 the writer initiated a project to classify the scholarly tablets of the Kouyunjik Collection by their colophons, which led to the discovery and publication of additional fragments of the collection.

The present contribution is the editio princeps of six large, single-column tablets, found in the N1 administrative archive of Babylon and presently located in the İstanbul Arkeoloji Müzeleri. They document substantial barley and emmer wheat deliveries to the Babylonian capital in the tenth and twentieth years of Nebuchadnezzar II’s reign and reveal an efficient administrative apparatus with a multitude of palace officials, scribes, accountants, and measurers.

This contribution provides editions of all known texts belonging to the archive of the Rēˀi-sisê family from Sippar. It further includes a discussion of the (relatively modest scale) business profile of its main protagonist, Šamaš-iddin/Niqūdu//Rēˀi-sisê, who was active during the second half of the sixth century BCE (546/530–518 BCE). The present study is the third installation of a larger collaborative effort to make available the Minor Archives from First Millennium BCE Babylonia, the results of which are to be published in volumes of this journal. A companion volume containing copies of all tablets published in this series as well as a comprehensive prosopography is in preparation for the Journal of Cuneiform Studies Supplemental Series.

The article contains the first edition of a hymn to Nabû probably from Neo-Babylonian or Achaemenid Borsippa. The text, written in a fixed ABA′B structure, extols Nabû by attributing to him some feats traditionally ascribed to other gods, such as killing Anzû or defeating the Sea. Nabû is presented as the highest of all gods, which gives occasion to discuss the so-called “Exaltation of Nabû” in other first-millennium texts.