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Table of Contents for Journal of Cuneiform Studies 75 (2023)
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Pp. 3–12: “A New Old Babylonian Date List with Year Names of Hammurabi,” by Ardalan Khwshnaw
This article contains the publication of a previously unknown date list of the Babylonian king Hammurabi, kept in the Sulaymaniyah Museum in Iraq. The tablet originally contained the year formulas for forty-two years of Hammurabi’s forty-three-year reign. The obverse is better preserved than the reverse and the beginnings of lines on the reverse are mostly broken.
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Pp. 13-26: “Malgum, A Synthesis,” by Rients de Boer
This article collects the new information recently made available concerning the town of Malgum and provides a synthesis of its political history, with a focus on the Old Babylonian period when it was the seat of a small kingdom between ca. 2025 and 1761 BCE. It was eventually conquered by Hammurabi of Babylon in 1761 BCE and large parts of its population were deported. We can trace the whereabouts of these deportees for another ca. forty years in the military province of Lower Yaḫrūrum. In the subsequent Middle Babylonian period, Malgu was the name of a province, but after this time the site appears to have been abandoned, only used much later as a cemetery in Parthian and Sassanian times.
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Pp. 27-47: “Dur-Abi-ešuh and the Abandonment of Nippur During the Late Old Babylonian Period: A Historical Survey,” by Marine Béranger
This article provides an account of the history of the fortress Dur-Abi-ešuh and offers a survey of the political and military situation of central Babylonia during the Late Old Babylonian period (ca. 1740–1600 BCE). Making use of a long-known but completely overlooked source, it also suggests a date for the complete abandonment of Nippur, the main cult center of the land, between 1631 and 1629 BCE.
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Pp. 49-59: “A Kassite Exercise Tablet with Omens Concerning the “Yoke” of the Liver,” by Nils P. Heeßel and Elyze Zomer
This paper offers an editio princeps of HS 1898, a Kassite exercise tablet containing an extract with ten liver omens followed by numeric tallies with the 10u-sign. The omens duplicate the fragmentary obverse of a Neo-Babylonian nīru-compendium, the reverse of which in turn replicated omens known from the fifteenth tablet of the bārûtu-series Pān tākalti and the unedited fragment from Nineveh. The student used complicated lexical and graphical variations in writing the technical term nīru, “the Yoke.”
ASOR Members with online access: log into ASOR’s Online Portal here. Once logged in, click the JOURNALS tab in the top navigation bar. From here you may select which journal you would like to read. If you have online access, you will see your selected journal’s current issue Table of Contents. Click on the “Current Issue” button and you will then be redirected to the University of Chicago Press’s (UCP) platform to immediately start reading any issue of your choice. Tutorials for how to log in to the Online Portal as well as how to navigate to the Portal Journals page can be found here. [/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][mk_divider thickness=”1″ margin_top=”10″ margin_bottom=”30″][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner css=”.vc_custom_1651156050549{padding-right: 10px !important;}”][vc_single_image image=”90994″ img_size=”1920×400″ alignment=”center” onclick=”custom_link” img_link_target=”_blank” link=”https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/725218″][mk_padding_divider size=”10″][vc_column_text]
Pp. 61-73: “The Taphonomy of Middle Assyrian Cuneiform Tablet Clusters: Archives or Refuse?,” by Victor Klinkenberg and Bleda S. Düring
In this article we report on the taphonomic analysis of several Middle Assyrian tablet clusters to identify the way these objects ended up in the ground. Rather than in-situ archives that were left behind during some catastrophe, we argue that these tablets were often deliberately discarded. Specifically for the tablet clusters we examined, we propose that they were first temporarily discarded in “office bins.” We claim that the occurrence of clustered, homogenous tablet groups at our sites are the result of the occasional emptying of such bins. The methodology we present could be of value for the analysis of other similar tablet-bearing contexts.
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Pp. 75-92: “The Third Column of Šimâ Milka: A New Attempt,” by Maurizio Viano
Šimâ milka is a wisdom composition known from Late Bronze Age sources found at Hattusa, Emar, and Ugarit. Many studies have been dedicated to this composition, but the fragmentary nature of sources prevented the understanding of several passages, and large portions of the text remain unpreserved or incomplete. The present article attempts a new reconstruction of the third column of the Emar manuscript by placing two fragments at the end of the column, rather than in the middle as in previous editions. This placement results in the restoration of the same line order in the Emar, Ugarit, and Hattusa manuscripts.
ASOR Members with online access: log into ASOR’s Online Portal here. Once logged in, click the JOURNALS tab in the top navigation bar. From here you may select which journal you would like to read. If you have online access, you will see your selected journal’s current issue Table of Contents. Click on the “Current Issue” button and you will then be redirected to the University of Chicago Press’s (UCP) platform to immediately start reading any issue of your choice. Tutorials for how to log in to the Online Portal as well as how to navigate to the Portal Journals page can be found here. [/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][mk_divider thickness=”1″ margin_top=”10″ margin_bottom=”30″][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner css=”.vc_custom_1651156050549{padding-right: 10px !important;}”][vc_single_image image=”90996″ img_size=”1920×400″ alignment=”center” onclick=”custom_link” img_link_target=”_blank” link=”https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/725220″][mk_padding_divider size=”10″][vc_column_text]
Pp. 93-107: “The Return of the Text: On Self-Reference in Cuneiform Literature,” by Sophus Helle
The article proposes the existence of a recurrent motif in cuneiform literature, the self-referential climax, in which literary works end by describing how they came into being: In the narrative equivalent of a snake biting its own tail, the poems that employ this motif culminate in their own creation. The article argues that the motif can yield a glimpse into the “implicit poetics” of cuneiform literature, that is, the conception of literature that circulated among cuneiform scholars and composers. It examines three case studies—Inana and Shukaletuda, The Cuthean Legend of Naram-Sîn, and Gilgamesh—arguing that they evince in their self-referential climaxes a distinctly bittersweet notion of textuality, since their creation relies on the tragedy of their main character, in a clear counterposing of content and form.
ASOR Members with online access: log into ASOR’s Online Portal here. Once logged in, click the JOURNALS tab in the top navigation bar. From here you may select which journal you would like to read. If you have online access, you will see your selected journal’s current issue Table of Contents. Click on the “Current Issue” button and you will then be redirected to the University of Chicago Press’s (UCP) platform to immediately start reading any issue of your choice. Tutorials for how to log in to the Online Portal as well as how to navigate to the Portal Journals page can be found here. [/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][mk_divider thickness=”1″ margin_top=”10″ margin_bottom=”30″][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner css=”.vc_custom_1651156050549{padding-right: 10px !important;}”][vc_single_image image=”90997″ img_size=”full” alignment=”center” onclick=”custom_link” img_link_target=”_blank” link=”https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/725221″][mk_padding_divider size=”10″][vc_column_text]
Pp. 109-122: “The Battle of Til-Tuba (653 BCE) and its Background Revisited,” by Saeideh Sharifi and Kolsoum Ghazanfari
Most of the information on the Battle of Til-Tuba derives from the narratives found in Assurbanipal’s annals, which are both brief and vague. Even though no Elamite documentation of the event is available, this study attempts to provide a clearer picture of this historical episode by comparing the annals with information preserved in a variety of other media. The results indicate that contrary to the report of the annals, Teumman did not initiate the war with Assyria. Rather, internal circumstances in Elam, including unrest and disorder, provided a good opportunity for Assyria to invade that land. Ultimately, the revolts and the betrayal of high-ranking government officials through the surrender of Hidalu laid the grounds for Teumman’s defeat at the Battle of Til-Tuba.
<ASOR Members with online access: log into ASOR’s Online Portal here. Once logged in, click the JOURNALS tab in the top navigation bar. From here you may select which journal you would like to read. If you have online access, you will see your selected journal’s current issue Table of Contents. Click on the “Current Issue” button and you will then be redirected to the University of Chicago Press’s (UCP) platform to immediately start reading any issue of your choice. Tutorials for how to log in to the Online Portal as well as how to navigate to the Portal Journals page can be found here. [/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][mk_divider thickness=”1″ margin_top=”10″ margin_bottom=”30″][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner css=”.vc_custom_1651156050549{padding-right: 10px !important;}”][vc_single_image image=”90998″ img_size=”full” alignment=”center” onclick=”custom_link” img_link_target=”_blank” link=”https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/725222″][mk_padding_divider size=”10″][vc_column_text]
Pp. 123-154: “Age and Masculinities During the Neo-Assyrian Period,” by Ellie Bennett
The age of an individual changes how other elements of identity, like masculinity, are expressed. For example, the modern expectations of “old men” and “young men” are very different. Here, I explore the differences between “young” and “old” men as expressed in the Neo-Assyrian textual corpus on the Open Richly Annotated Cuneiform Corpus (Oracc). This corpus offers a unique opportunity to incorporate recently developed word co-occurrence methods alongside a traditional close reading approach in order to explore the differences between old and young men in Neo-Assyrian texts. I demonstrate that young men were conceptually different from old men, and both were key to the construction of Neo-Assyrian hegemonic masculinities.
ASOR Members with online access: log into ASOR’s Online Portal here. Once logged in, click the JOURNALS tab in the top navigation bar. From here you may select which journal you would like to read. If you have online access, you will see your selected journal’s current issue Table of Contents. Click on the “Current Issue” button and you will then be redirected to the University of Chicago Press’s (UCP) platform to immediately start reading any issue of your choice. Tutorials for how to log in to the Online Portal as well as how to navigate to the Portal Journals page can be found here. [/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][mk_divider thickness=”1″ margin_top=”10″][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner css=”.vc_custom_1651156050549{padding-right: 10px !important;}”][vc_single_image image=”90999″ img_size=”full” alignment=”center” onclick=”custom_link” img_link_target=”_blank” link=”https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/725223″][mk_padding_divider size=”10″][vc_column_text]
Pp. 155-169: “Therapeutic Prescriptions and Magical-Medical Rituals Against Fever: An Edition of a Late Babylonian Tablet BM 55516 + BM 55577+1882,0704.188,” by András Bácskay
The tablet BM 55516+ contains therapeutic prescriptions (ointments and fumigations) and magical-medical rituals including incantations against fever (ummu) and “persistent fever” (ummu lazzu). I know of no duplicate, but the prescriptions and the incantations have several parallels on medical tablets from Assur, Nineveh, Kalhu, and Babylon. I first provide an edition of the tablet, including all parallels followed by a discussion of the two magical-medical rituals against fever mentioned in the text.
ASOR Members with online access: log into ASOR’s Online Portal here. Once logged in, click the JOURNALS tab in the top navigation bar. From here you may select which journal you would like to read. If you have online access, you will see your selected journal’s current issue Table of Contents. Click on the “Current Issue” button and you will then be redirected to the University of Chicago Press’s (UCP) platform to immediately start reading any issue of your choice. Tutorials for how to log in to the Online Portal as well as how to navigate to the Portal Journals page can be found here. [/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][mk_divider thickness=”1″ margin_top=”10″][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner css=”.vc_custom_1651156050549{padding-right: 10px !important;}”][vc_single_image image=”91000″ img_size=”full” alignment=”center” onclick=”custom_link” img_link_target=”_blank” link=”https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/725224″][mk_padding_divider size=”10″][vc_column_text]
Pp. 171-188: “Nebuchadnezzar II’s Palace Overseer (Ša Pān Ekalli) and The Canal of Abundance Building Projects,” by Małgorzata Sandowicz and Stefan Zawadzki
A document published in this article documents the involvement of one of Nebuchadnezzar II’s top court officials, the palace overseer (ša pān ekalli), in a building project managed by the authorities of the Ebabbar temple of the city of Sippar. To place the project in its chronological and geographic context, five additional legal and administrative texts from the Ebabbar are published for the first time as well.
ASOR Members with online access: log into ASOR’s Online Portal here. Once logged in, click the JOURNALS tab in the top navigation bar. From here you may select which journal you would like to read. If you have online access, you will see your selected journal’s current issue Table of Contents. Click on the “Current Issue” button and you will then be redirected to the University of Chicago Press’s (UCP) platform to immediately start reading any issue of your choice. Tutorials for how to log in to the Online Portal as well as how to navigate to the Portal Journals page can be found here. [/vc_column_text][mk_divider thickness=”1″ margin_top=”10″][vc_single_image image=”91001″ img_size=”full” alignment=”center” onclick=”custom_link” img_link_target=”_blank” link=”https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/725225″][mk_padding_divider size=”10″][vc_column_text]
Pp. 189-195: “BM 33878: A Uranology Fragment from Babylon,” by Aino Hätinen
This article presents an edition of a new uranology fragment (BM 33878) from the Babylon Collection of the British Museum. Although small, this fragment offers further information about the social context of the uranology texts in late-period Babylonia.
ASOR Members with online access: log into ASOR’s Online Portal here. Once logged in, click the JOURNALS tab in the top navigation bar. From here you may select which journal you would like to read. If you have online access, you will see your selected journal’s current issue Table of Contents. Click on the “Current Issue” button and you will then be redirected to the University of Chicago Press’s (UCP) platform to immediately start reading any issue of your choice. Tutorials for how to log in to the Online Portal as well as how to navigate to the Portal Journals page can be found here. [/vc_column_text][mk_divider thickness=”1″ margin_top=”10″][vc_single_image image=”91002″ img_size=”full” alignment=”center” onclick=”custom_link” img_link_target=”_blank” link=”https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/725226″][mk_padding_divider size=”10″][vc_column_text]
Pp. 197-206: “The Reedition of the Persepolis Treasury Tablet Pt 1963-8,” by Jalil Bakhtiari
Twenty tablets or fragments from the Persepolis Treasury Archive were published by George Cameron in 1965. One of them, the fragment PT 1963-8, which belongs to a group of texts concerning sheep rations, is broken at the bottom. A reconsideration of the text leads to proposed restorations of parts of the missing sections, according to mathematical calculations of rations and comparisons with the other PT tablets.
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Friends of ASOR present the next webinar in the 2023-2024 season on January 11th at 6:00pm EST presented by Dr. Yorke Rowan, moderated by Dr. Chad Hill. During the 9th to 8th millennia BCE, climatic conditions created environments that fostered increasing cereal and pulse farming, animal husbandry, and population growth. The “Neolithic Revolution” that occurred across southwest Asia during the Pre-Pottery Neolithic was followed by a much less well-understood period, the Late (or Pottery) Neolithic. Even more obscure, the deserts and steppes beyond the Fertile Crescent were considered underpopulated and of little significance to the larger neolithization process. Through the pioneering field work of people like Alison Betts, Svend Helms and Andrew Garrard, a few structures were known in the steppes and desert of eastern Jordan, an inhospitable region of basalt cobbles and insufficient rainfall for permanent farming. However, recent field research demonstrates that areas such as the Black Desert of eastern Jordan witnessed a sharp uptick in population and building, particularly during the Late Neolithic.
New data indicates this region was much more hospitable than at present, evident in the clusters of hundreds of permanent structures and extensive chains of hunting traps known as ‘desert kites’. Other enigmatic desert features such as petroglyphs, “wheels” and paths are of unknown date and function, but attest to the recurring use of the region. Join Yorke Rowan as he presents the latest discoveries from the Black Desert of eastern Jordan.
Yorke Rowan is Research Professor in the Archaeology of the Southern Levant at the Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures (formerly the OI) at the University of Chicago. He co-directs the NSF funded Kites in Context and the Eastern Badia Archaeological Project, both archaeological field programs in the Black Desert of eastern Jordan. In addition, he directs the Galilee Prehistory Project in northern Israel. He has been a Fulbright Scholar in Jordan and NEH Fellow at American Center for Overseas Research in Amman and the W. F. Albright Institute for Archaeological Research in Jerusalem. His most recent volumes include “The Social Archaeology of the Levant: from Prehistory to the Present” (with A. Yasur-Landau and E. Cline) and recently submitted the proofs for “Shiqmim II: The Phase II Excavations at a Chalcolithic settlement center in the Northern Negev Desert, Israel (1987-1993)” with T. E. Levy and M. M. Burton.
J.P. Dessel is the Steinfeld Professor of Near Eastern Archaeology in the Department of History, and an affiliated member of the Fern and Manfred Steinfeld Program in Judaic Studies at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. He is also the president of the Albright Institute of Archaeological Research in Jerusalem. He earned his Ph.D. in Near Eastern Studies from the University of Arizona in 1991. He has over 40 seasons in the field working in Israel, Egypt, Turkey, and North America, and co-directed the excavations at Tell el-Wawiyat and Tell ‘Ein Zippori in the Lower Galilee. His research interests include Egypto-Canaanite relations in the fourth millennium, rural complexity in the Late Bronze and Iron Ages, and ceramic technology. Currently he is a senior staff member on the Tayinat Excavation Project in Turkey, and the Tell Abel Beit Ma’acah Excavations. When Dr. Dessel isn’t in the field, he can be found in his kitchen trying to perfect the recipe for red lentil soup, he is very close.
Friends of ASOR present the next webinar in the 2023-2024 season on October 5 2023, at 3:00 pm EDT, presented by Professor Aaron Brody moderated by Dr. Caroline Sauvage. Ancient seafarers faced dangers and fears posed by the sea and hazards of sailing. Accordingly, specialized sacred beliefs and ritual practices developed among Levantine mariners, who are the focus of this study, which were a subset of terrestrial religion. Sailors honored deities whose maritime, celestial, or meteorological attributes could either benefit or devastate a voyage. While on land, these divine patrons were worshipped in harbor temples and promontory shrines, sometimes with maritime votives. While at sea, divine protection came from the ships themselves, which were considered to be imbued with the spirit of a deity; the vessels also contained sacred spaces that allowed for continued contact with their divine patrons.
Mariners performed religious ceremonies to enlist and ensure sacred safeguarding and success for their voyages. Maritime features were also part of the funerary practices and mortuary rituals of seafarers. These specialized sacred beliefs and ritual practices were generated by the liminality of the deep and the unique uncertainties and perils at sea, and aided in Levantine maritime exploration, commercial exchanges, and Phoenician settlement that eventually spread throughout the Mediterranean basin and beyond to the Atlantic coasts of Iberia and Morocco.
Aaron Brody is the Robert and Kathryn Riddell Professor of Bible and Archaeology and Director of the Badè Museum at Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley, California. He has excavated primarily at harbor sites in Israel, including Tel Nami, Ashkelon, Dor, and Tel Akko; and participated in projects in the Negev and Akko Plain and with the Ohlone-Muwekma at sites in northern California. He has held fellowships at the Albright Institute of Archaeological Research in Jerusalem and the American Center of Research in Amman. Recent publications have focused on the topics of household religion, metallurgy, and interregional trade and economy at Tell en-Nasbeh, from holdings in the Badè and Rockefeller Museums. Professor Brody has longstanding research interests on Levantine seafarers, women’s religion and the sea, and underwater, deep-water, and harbor archaeology. He is a co-editor of a new volume, No Place Like Home: Ancient Near Eastern Houses and Households, recently published by Archaeopress. The research he is presenting today is from a chapter he authored in the Handbook of Material Religion in the Ancient Near East, edited by Nicola Laneri and Sharon Steadman, published earlier this year by Bloomsbury Academic press. That chapter and today’s talk are entitled “Maritime Viewscapes and the Material Religion of Levantine Seafarers”.
In the 2000 season another 800 came to light. Impressed pellets such as these were used to witness and seal papyrus documents throughout the Near East in the Hellenistic and Roman eras. Subsequent study proved the sealings found at Kedesh to date to the first ½ of the 2nd c BCE, years in which the Seleucid dynasty controlled the region.Excavation over succeeding years clarified the find spot of the sealings. They and the records they sealed were stored in an archive complex deep within a large administrative building of Achaemenid and Hellenistic date. The archive burned in the mid 2nd c BCE at the end of the Seleucid control of the region or shortly thereafter. The presence of such a relatively large archive at Kedesh indicates significant and unexpected administrative activity at the site in the waning years of the Seleucid Empire. The images chosen for the seal rings impressed on the sealings from Kedesh reflect choices made by individuals living in a mixed Greek and Phoenician environment in times of shifting identities and political affiliations.
But there is another—basically unexplored—avenue that can reveal surprisingly precise information about what the early alphabet’s creators drew on and how they were trained. Because in fact there is ample evidence about what knowledge the earliest alphabetic writers did and did not draw on. First, if the alphabet’s inventors drew on what Egyptian signs looked like, did they know, or care, what they sounded like? That is, is there any evidence that they knew how the Egyptian writing system actually worked? Second is whether anyone was professionally trained in the early alphabet: was it systematized and taught carefully, the way a scribe would, or casually and unevenly transmitted, like a game or informal craft tradition?
The Trustee Nominations Committee announces an open call for (self) nominations for the ASOR Board of Trustees (Class of 2026). There are three primary responsibilities of the members of the Board of Trustees: