A reexamination of the relief on the Hammurabi’s “Law Code” stele reveals that the type of beard worn by Hammurabi and Šamaš does not conform to the Old Babylonian beard type. Moreover, the linear workmanship of the lower part of the king’s beard suggests that the relief was never finished. Considering the troubled history of the stele—made and erected in Babylonia in the late fifties of the eighteenth century BCE and carried away to Susa in the mid twelfth century—it is proposed that the resculpting of the Stele was undertaken by Šutruk-Naḫḫunte or his son Kutir-Naḫḫunte upon the Elamite capture of the monument with the goal of making it their own. An attempt to clarify the circumstances and motivation of this reworking is offered in the article.
{"title":"Unfinished Business: The Relief on the Hammurabi Louvre Stele Revisited","authors":"Tallay Ornan","doi":"10.1086/703854","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/703854","url":null,"abstract":"A reexamination of the relief on the Hammurabi’s “Law Code” stele reveals that the type of beard worn by Hammurabi and Šamaš does not conform to the Old Babylonian beard type. Moreover, the linear workmanship of the lower part of the king’s beard suggests that the relief was never finished. Considering the troubled history of the stele—made and erected in Babylonia in the late fifties of the eighteenth century BCE and carried away to Susa in the mid twelfth century—it is proposed that the resculpting of the Stele was undertaken by Šutruk-Naḫḫunte or his son Kutir-Naḫḫunte upon the Elamite capture of the monument with the goal of making it their own. An attempt to clarify the circumstances and motivation of this reworking is offered in the article.","PeriodicalId":36366,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Cuneiform Studies","volume":"71 1","pages":"85 - 109"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1086/703854","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46253057","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article provides a preliminary edition of an unprovenienced Old Akkadian tablet located in the Iraq Museum that must have originated in Umma or its environs. This account of equids is unique in that it is the first “mu-iti” type that carries a year name; this is also the first known such year name from the reign of Manishtusu, the third ruler of the Sargonic dynasty of the late third millennium BCE.
{"title":"A Double Date Formula of the Old Akkadian King Manishtusu","authors":"Nashat Alkhafaji","doi":"10.1086/704792","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/704792","url":null,"abstract":"This article provides a preliminary edition of an unprovenienced Old Akkadian tablet located in the Iraq Museum that must have originated in Umma or its environs. This account of equids is unique in that it is the first “mu-iti” type that carries a year name; this is also the first known such year name from the reign of Manishtusu, the third ruler of the Sargonic dynasty of the late third millennium BCE.","PeriodicalId":36366,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Cuneiform Studies","volume":"71 1","pages":"3 - 9"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1086/704792","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43388246","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In 2014, I proposed that the GUL-šeš deities may have to be identified with the Kuwa(n)šeš deities, a suggestion that has met with severe criticisms. Since now new evidence has come to light that confirms the equation of these deities, it seems opportune to re-address this debate, which also has important consequences for the use of hieroglyphic writing in Anatolia. In this article, I will present the new evidence, counter the critiques that have been given, and address the wider implications.
{"title":"Fate Strikes Back: New Evidence for the Identification of the Hittite Fate Deities and Its Implications for Hieroglyphic Writing in Anatolia","authors":"W. Waal","doi":"10.1086/703856","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/703856","url":null,"abstract":"In 2014, I proposed that the GUL-šeš deities may have to be identified with the Kuwa(n)šeš deities, a suggestion that has met with severe criticisms. Since now new evidence has come to light that confirms the equation of these deities, it seems opportune to re-address this debate, which also has important consequences for the use of hieroglyphic writing in Anatolia. In this article, I will present the new evidence, counter the critiques that have been given, and address the wider implications.","PeriodicalId":36366,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Cuneiform Studies","volume":"71 1","pages":"121 - 132"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1086/703856","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41811772","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The production of a barley surplus by the Ur III economy was vital for the operation of its commodity money system. The standardizing bi-monetary equivalence of a gur measure of barley and a shekel of silver stabilized commodity prices for the thirty-five years before the reign of Ibbi-Suen. In Ibbi-Suen’s early years, the collapse of the barley supply induced an excessive devaluation of the barley to silver ratio leading to a near hyperinflation in the prices of staple commodities and bovids required for cult and other purposes. This article analyzes the inflation in prices of animals and staples correlated with the precipitous fall in the barley to silver price ratio. Data is primarily from the Ur texts dated to the seventh year of Ibbi-Suen’s reign concerned with the purchase and delivery to state institutions of animals. Importantly, an analysis of these events demonstrated the central function of a barley surplus in the Ur III monetary system.
{"title":"The Structure of Prices in the Ur III Economy: Cults and Prices at the Collapse of the Ur III State","authors":"E. Cripps","doi":"10.1086/704791","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/704791","url":null,"abstract":"The production of a barley surplus by the Ur III economy was vital for the operation of its commodity money system. The standardizing bi-monetary equivalence of a gur measure of barley and a shekel of silver stabilized commodity prices for the thirty-five years before the reign of Ibbi-Suen. In Ibbi-Suen’s early years, the collapse of the barley supply induced an excessive devaluation of the barley to silver ratio leading to a near hyperinflation in the prices of staple commodities and bovids required for cult and other purposes. This article analyzes the inflation in prices of animals and staples correlated with the precipitous fall in the barley to silver price ratio. Data is primarily from the Ur texts dated to the seventh year of Ibbi-Suen’s reign concerned with the purchase and delivery to state institutions of animals. Importantly, an analysis of these events demonstrated the central function of a barley surplus in the Ur III monetary system.","PeriodicalId":36366,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Cuneiform Studies","volume":"71 1","pages":"53 - 76"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1086/704791","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41626062","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The archeology of the Deh Luran plain was documented by the work of Frank Hole and his associates in 1960s and 1970s. While these investigations were mostly dedicated to the study of the village periods, the presence of early state formations on the plain was also documented by their surface surveys. Tepe Farukhabad was an exception, but because it was only a small settlement in the third and second millennia BCE, the excavations there did not yield fruitful results for this period. Based on their systematic surface study of Tepe Musiyan, Wright and Neely argued that during the third and second millennia BCE, this settlement played a central role in this strategic plain due to its location on the route from Susa to Der (Badra in Iraq). Recently, our team again surveyed the Deh Luran Plain. Our visit to Musiyan provided us with a cylinder seal discovered by one of the locals. The inscription reveals the owner as a person with an Amorite name who may have been present in Musiyan sometime during the early centuries of the second millennium BCE, contemporary with the end of the Šimaški period, which in Mesopotamia extends from late in the Third Dynasty of Ur until the early Old Babylonian period.
{"title":"A Cylinder Seal with an Amorite Name from Tepe Musiyan, Deh Luran Plain","authors":"M. Zeynivand","doi":"10.1086/703853","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/703853","url":null,"abstract":"The archeology of the Deh Luran plain was documented by the work of Frank Hole and his associates in 1960s and 1970s. While these investigations were mostly dedicated to the study of the village periods, the presence of early state formations on the plain was also documented by their surface surveys. Tepe Farukhabad was an exception, but because it was only a small settlement in the third and second millennia BCE, the excavations there did not yield fruitful results for this period. Based on their systematic surface study of Tepe Musiyan, Wright and Neely argued that during the third and second millennia BCE, this settlement played a central role in this strategic plain due to its location on the route from Susa to Der (Badra in Iraq). Recently, our team again surveyed the Deh Luran Plain. Our visit to Musiyan provided us with a cylinder seal discovered by one of the locals. The inscription reveals the owner as a person with an Amorite name who may have been present in Musiyan sometime during the early centuries of the second millennium BCE, contemporary with the end of the Šimaški period, which in Mesopotamia extends from late in the Third Dynasty of Ur until the early Old Babylonian period.","PeriodicalId":36366,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Cuneiform Studies","volume":"71 1","pages":"77 - 83"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1086/703853","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41556895","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Aside from the institutional households, a good number of “private” estates are known from Ur III sources. These private households were usually named after their owners (members of the royal entourage, the military or the local elite, merchants, cultic officials etc.), and controlled extensive resources, but were only rarely mentioned in the administrative documents from the provincial archives. One of the best-documented private estate is the one that belonged to a certain Ur-DUN. His estate was located in the Ĝirsu/Lagaš province and played an important role in the raising of slaughter animals and wool production. The aim of the present paper is to describe the economic activities of the Ur-DUN household according to the available sources and to highlight how this private household interacted with the provincial economy and the crown/military sector.
{"title":"How to “Institutionalize” a Household in Ur III Ĝirsu/Lagaš: The Case of the House of Ur-DUN","authors":"Palmiro Notizia","doi":"10.1086/703851","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/703851","url":null,"abstract":"Aside from the institutional households, a good number of “private” estates are known from Ur III sources. These private households were usually named after their owners (members of the royal entourage, the military or the local elite, merchants, cultic officials etc.), and controlled extensive resources, but were only rarely mentioned in the administrative documents from the provincial archives. One of the best-documented private estate is the one that belonged to a certain Ur-DUN. His estate was located in the Ĝirsu/Lagaš province and played an important role in the raising of slaughter animals and wool production. The aim of the present paper is to describe the economic activities of the Ur-DUN household according to the available sources and to highlight how this private household interacted with the provincial economy and the crown/military sector.","PeriodicalId":36366,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Cuneiform Studies","volume":"71 1","pages":"11 - 34"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1086/703851","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42471268","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The recovery of a few royal inscriptions at Tūlūl al-Baqarat (Iraq) by the archaeological mission of the University of Torino has made it possible to propose the identification of the site with ancient Keš. The present contribution reexamines the location of Irisaĝrig in light of its well-known textual connections with and physical proximity to Keš.
{"title":"On the Location of Irisaĝrig Once Again","authors":"M. Viano","doi":"10.1086/703852","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/703852","url":null,"abstract":"The recovery of a few royal inscriptions at Tūlūl al-Baqarat (Iraq) by the archaeological mission of the University of Torino has made it possible to propose the identification of the site with ancient Keš. The present contribution reexamines the location of Irisaĝrig in light of its well-known textual connections with and physical proximity to Keš.","PeriodicalId":36366,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Cuneiform Studies","volume":"71 1","pages":"35 - 52"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1086/703852","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41600550","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article presents a new transcription and translation of the TOPADA inscription. According to the new interpretation, the inscription narrates the events of a four-year-long war between a western coalition led by an unnamed Phrygian king and a coalition of post-Hittite rulers from south-central Anatolia, led by Great King Wasusarma. The careful study of paleography, scribal practice, script development, and literary aspects yields a dating of the inscription to the late tenth or early ninth century BCE. In view of the growing archaeological evidence for the central Anatolian Dark Ages, the new interpretation of the inscription has far-reaching implications for the overarching historical picture of the early first millennium BCE in Western Asia. It also provides the earliest attestation for the kingdom of Phrygia, and the sole occurrence of the toponym Phrygia and derivatives outside of the western Greco-Roman sources.
{"title":"War in Anatolia in the Post-Hittite Period: The Anatolian Hieroglyphic Inscription of Topada Revised","authors":"L. d’Alfonso","doi":"10.1086/703857","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/703857","url":null,"abstract":"This article presents a new transcription and translation of the TOPADA inscription. According to the new interpretation, the inscription narrates the events of a four-year-long war between a western coalition led by an unnamed Phrygian king and a coalition of post-Hittite rulers from south-central Anatolia, led by Great King Wasusarma. The careful study of paleography, scribal practice, script development, and literary aspects yields a dating of the inscription to the late tenth or early ninth century BCE. In view of the growing archaeological evidence for the central Anatolian Dark Ages, the new interpretation of the inscription has far-reaching implications for the overarching historical picture of the early first millennium BCE in Western Asia. It also provides the earliest attestation for the kingdom of Phrygia, and the sole occurrence of the toponym Phrygia and derivatives outside of the western Greco-Roman sources.","PeriodicalId":36366,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Cuneiform Studies","volume":"71 1","pages":"133 - 152"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1086/703857","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41774427","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Large digital datasets of cuneiform sources lend themselves to computational analysis that can complement and improve upon traditional philological work. The present article applies social network analysis to an electronic corpus of 1,532 texts to study the god Aššur and his position in divine networks in the Neo-Assyrian period. Our results show that the performance of social network analysis can be improved by using a small window size and calculating tie strengths with pointwise mutual information. This allows us to study the co-occurrences of gods in semantic contexts. From a network perspective, Aššur is not a very central god in our corpus despite his importance in Assyrian royal theology, but he rather joins the existing networks of gods without altering them.
{"title":"Aššur and His Friends: A Statistical Analysis of Neo-Assyrian Texts","authors":"Tero Alstola, Shana Zaia, Aleksi Sahala, H. Jauhiainen, Saana Svärd, Krister Lindén","doi":"10.1086/703859","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/703859","url":null,"abstract":"Large digital datasets of cuneiform sources lend themselves to computational analysis that can complement and improve upon traditional philological work. The present article applies social network analysis to an electronic corpus of 1,532 texts to study the god Aššur and his position in divine networks in the Neo-Assyrian period. Our results show that the performance of social network analysis can be improved by using a small window size and calculating tie strengths with pointwise mutual information. This allows us to study the co-occurrences of gods in semantic contexts. From a network perspective, Aššur is not a very central god in our corpus despite his importance in Assyrian royal theology, but he rather joins the existing networks of gods without altering them.","PeriodicalId":36366,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Cuneiform Studies","volume":"71 1","pages":"159 - 180"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1086/703859","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48107476","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2018-01-01DOI: 10.5615/jcunestud.70.2018.0027
A. Biglari, S. Alibaigi, Masoud Beyranvand
Recent surveys on the eastern hillsides of Bamou Mountain near the current frontiers of Iran and Iraq have led to the discovery of an ancient broken stele in the area of the Sarab-e Sey (Seyed) Khan spring. The stele was made from a large slab of limestone that was broken and of which only two fragments have been recovered so far. The remaining pieces of the stele had a full-size image of a person in a long robe holding a crook in his right hand, undoubtedly a representation of the god Amurru; his left foot rests on the back of a sitting goat while grasping the goat's horns with his left hand. Another, smaller figure stands to the right of the main figure, near his left shoulder, with in front of him carved a star which could be the symbol of Ishtar. The highly damaged nature of the stele and the absence of an inscription does not allow any precise dating, but it may be proposed that the stele of Sey Khan dates to the Old Babylonian period.
{"title":"The Stele of Sarab-e Sey Khan: A Recent Discovery of a Second-Millennium Stele on the Iranian–Mesopotamian Borderland in the Western Zagros Mountains","authors":"A. Biglari, S. Alibaigi, Masoud Beyranvand","doi":"10.5615/jcunestud.70.2018.0027","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5615/jcunestud.70.2018.0027","url":null,"abstract":"Recent surveys on the eastern hillsides of Bamou Mountain near the current frontiers of Iran and Iraq have led to the discovery of an ancient broken stele in the area of the Sarab-e Sey (Seyed) Khan spring. The stele was made from a large slab of limestone that was broken and of which only two fragments have been recovered so far. The remaining pieces of the stele had a full-size image of a person in a long robe holding a crook in his right hand, undoubtedly a representation of the god Amurru; his left foot rests on the back of a sitting goat while grasping the goat's horns with his left hand. Another, smaller figure stands to the right of the main figure, near his left shoulder, with in front of him carved a star which could be the symbol of Ishtar. The highly damaged nature of the stele and the absence of an inscription does not allow any precise dating, but it may be proposed that the stele of Sey Khan dates to the Old Babylonian period.","PeriodicalId":36366,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Cuneiform Studies","volume":"70 1","pages":"27 - 36"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.5615/jcunestud.70.2018.0027","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45568630","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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