Letters from Old Babylonian Kish

by Reid, J. Nicholas; Wagensonner, Klaus

• ISBN13: 9780198817581
• ISBN10: 0198817584
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2025-04-16
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

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these letters moved into various museums through the antiquities market in the early 1900s, many remained unstudied and unpublished, despite providing many pristine examples of personal and professional correspondence.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.

Author Biography

J. Nicholas Reid, Professor of Old Testament and Ancient Near Eastern Studies, Reformed Theological Seminary Orlando,Klaus Wagensonner, Associate Research Scholar and Lecturer in Assyriology, Yale Univiersity

J. Nicholas Reid is Professor of Old Testament and Ancient Near Eastern Studies at Reformed Theological Seminary in Orlando, where he also directs the Hybrid MDiv Program. He continues to maintain a research affiliation with the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, NYU, where served as a Visiting Scholar after doctoral work at Oxford University. He primarily works on topics of social history and unpublished cuneiform tablets.

Klaus Wagensonner is Associate Research Scholar and Lecturer in Assyriology at Yale Univiersity. He specializes in Sumerian literature and (early) lexicography in Mesopotamia. His PhD at the University of Vienna (2016) was a study on knowledge organization in the earliest cuneiform word lists. Between 2011 and 2015, he was part of the Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (CDLI). Between 2019 and 2022, he conducted the NEH-funded full digitization of the cuneiform artifacts housed in the Yale Babylonian Collection. He is currently working on a translation project, whose aim is to make the rich textual record in the Babylonian Collection accessible for a wider audience.

Table of Contents

IntroductionText CatalogueConcordancesThe TextsI.. Letters sent by Etel-pî-Marduk (Nos. 1 40)II.. Letters sent by Gimil-Marduk (Nos. 41 48)III.. Letters addressed to Gimil-Marduk (Nos. 49 58)IV.. Letters sent by Munawwirum (Nos. 59 76)V.. Further letters addressed to Etel-pî-Marduk (Nos. 77 79)VI.. Letters sent by Yantin-era? (Nos. 80 86)VII.. Further letters addressed to Gimillia (Nos. 87 99)VIII.. Further letters addressed to the 'Superior' and similar officials (Nos. 100 133)IX.. Further letters addressed to the 'Gentleman' (Nos. 134 156)X.. Letters addressed to the 'Father' (Nos. 157 160)XI.. Letters addressed to the Burgomaster (rabianum) (Nos. ?161 ??162)XII.. Letters by judges and civic institutions (Nos. 163 164)XIII.. Varia (Nos. 165 191)XIV.. Address broken (Nos. 192 202)BibliographyIndexesPlates