Lexical texts are lists of words and lists of cuneiform signs, developed by the ancient scribes t... more Lexical texts are lists of words and lists of cuneiform signs, developed by the ancient scribes to describe, transmit, and research one of their most treasured fields of knowledge: the knowledge of writing. The history of these lists extends from the very beginning of writing in the late fourth millennium BCE all the way to the Parthian period in the first century AD. This study investigates the development of the lists, their uses in ancient Mesopotamian scholarship and education, and their role in intellectual life.
CUNEIFORM MONOGRAPHS RELIGION, LITERATURE, AND SCHOLARSHIP: THE SUMERIAN COMPOSITION «NANSE AND T... more CUNEIFORM MONOGRAPHS RELIGION, LITERATURE, AND SCHOLARSHIP: THE SUMERIAN COMPOSITION «NANSE AND THE BIRDS» Niek Veldhuis ... CUNEIFORM MONOGRAPHS 22 Managing Editor Geerd Haayer Edited by T. Abusch, MJ Geller, MP Maidman SM Maul ...
This study contains an analysis of the Old Babylonian scribal curriculum at Nippur (around 1750 B... more This study contains an analysis of the Old Babylonian scribal curriculum at Nippur (around 1750 BCE), through the analysis of the structure and curricular function of one particular textbook: the list of trees and wooden objects. The Old Babylonian version of the list of trees and ...
LIBRARY OF ORIENTAL TEXTS This One 9YF2-AZW-DHDW ... LIBRARY OF ORIENTAL TEXTS LOT General Editor... more LIBRARY OF ORIENTAL TEXTS This One 9YF2-AZW-DHDW ... LIBRARY OF ORIENTAL TEXTS LOT General Editors G. Haayer, ME Vogelzang, Jac. van Dijk Board of Advisers B. Alster, HLJ Vanstiphout, JH Hospers, M. Stol FIRST SERIES ANCIENT MESOPOTAMIAN TEXTS ...
The results of four expeditions (which he directed mostly from a distance) were absolutely stunni... more The results of four expeditions (which he directed mostly from a distance) were absolutely stunning-so much so that more than hundred years later we are still in the process of inventorying, reading, and translating the tens of thousands of cuneiform texts and fragments that were found by Hilprecht and his team. The texts range from the late Early Dynastic period (around 2400 BCE) to the Neo-Babylonian period (around 500) and include everything from administrative documents, to letters, literary compositions, and scholarly texts of all kinds. Hilprecht was a very accomplished Assyriologist; he was interested in the cuneiform tablets, much more than in the architecture or other archaeological remains. And he hit gold. The only site that could be compared to Nippur in terms of numbers of cuneiform tablets was Nineveh, excavated several decades earlier by the English. Hilprecht was hardly an archaeologist by modern standards. Findspots were recorded only in very general terms-and even those notes are often absent, got lost, or refer to objects that can no longer be identified in museum collections.
The Old Babylonian scribal cumculum included several so-called acrographic lexical lists. The def... more The Old Babylonian scribal cumculum included several so-called acrographic lexical lists. The defining characteristic of an acrographic list is that the entries are ordered by their first or main sign. Proto-Izi, Proto-Kagal, and Nigga have been edited by M. Civil in MSL 13. A fourth example, Proto-Sag, was edited by the same author in MSL SS 1. In this paper I will present a late Old Babylonian acrographic list with Akkadian glosses ($1). The evidence from this new source will be used for an analysis of the function of these lists compared to other lexical compositions (52), and discussion of the uses of glosses and Akkadian translations in the Old Babylonian lexical tradition (•˜3), followed by a short conclusion (54). This paper ends with a discussion of the textual history of Nigga (Appendix).
L EXICAL T EXTS FROM J ENA Stahl Field Report 2014 Archaeological Research Facility, UC Berkeley ... more L EXICAL T EXTS FROM J ENA Stahl Field Report 2014 Archaeological Research Facility, UC Berkeley www.escholarship.org/uc/item/6j25593g Niek Veldhuis Near Eastern Studies, UC Berkeley [email protected] In the late nineteenth century Hermann Hilprecht, Professor of Assyriology at the University of Pennsylvania, went to Mesopotamia, then part of the Ottoman Empire, to excavate the city of Nippur. The results of four expeditions (which he directed mostly from a distance) were absolutely stunning – so much so that more than hundred years later we are still in the process of inventorying, reading, and translating the tens of thousands of cuneiform texts and fragments that were found by Hilprecht and his team. The texts range from the late Early Dynastic period (around 2400 BCE) to the Neo-Babylonian period (around 500) and include everything from administrative documents, to letters, literary compositions, and scholarly texts of all kinds. Hilprecht was a very accomplished Assyriologi...
Lexical texts are lists of words and lists of cuneiform signs, developed by the ancient scribes t... more Lexical texts are lists of words and lists of cuneiform signs, developed by the ancient scribes to describe, transmit, and research one of their most treasured fields of knowledge: the knowledge of writing. The history of these lists extends from the very beginning of writing in the late fourth millennium BCE all the way to the Parthian period in the first century AD. This study investigates the development of the lists, their uses in ancient Mesopotamian scholarship and education, and their role in intellectual life.
CUNEIFORM MONOGRAPHS RELIGION, LITERATURE, AND SCHOLARSHIP: THE SUMERIAN COMPOSITION «NANSE AND T... more CUNEIFORM MONOGRAPHS RELIGION, LITERATURE, AND SCHOLARSHIP: THE SUMERIAN COMPOSITION «NANSE AND THE BIRDS» Niek Veldhuis ... CUNEIFORM MONOGRAPHS 22 Managing Editor Geerd Haayer Edited by T. Abusch, MJ Geller, MP Maidman SM Maul ...
This study contains an analysis of the Old Babylonian scribal curriculum at Nippur (around 1750 B... more This study contains an analysis of the Old Babylonian scribal curriculum at Nippur (around 1750 BCE), through the analysis of the structure and curricular function of one particular textbook: the list of trees and wooden objects. The Old Babylonian version of the list of trees and ...
LIBRARY OF ORIENTAL TEXTS This One 9YF2-AZW-DHDW ... LIBRARY OF ORIENTAL TEXTS LOT General Editor... more LIBRARY OF ORIENTAL TEXTS This One 9YF2-AZW-DHDW ... LIBRARY OF ORIENTAL TEXTS LOT General Editors G. Haayer, ME Vogelzang, Jac. van Dijk Board of Advisers B. Alster, HLJ Vanstiphout, JH Hospers, M. Stol FIRST SERIES ANCIENT MESOPOTAMIAN TEXTS ...
The results of four expeditions (which he directed mostly from a distance) were absolutely stunni... more The results of four expeditions (which he directed mostly from a distance) were absolutely stunning-so much so that more than hundred years later we are still in the process of inventorying, reading, and translating the tens of thousands of cuneiform texts and fragments that were found by Hilprecht and his team. The texts range from the late Early Dynastic period (around 2400 BCE) to the Neo-Babylonian period (around 500) and include everything from administrative documents, to letters, literary compositions, and scholarly texts of all kinds. Hilprecht was a very accomplished Assyriologist; he was interested in the cuneiform tablets, much more than in the architecture or other archaeological remains. And he hit gold. The only site that could be compared to Nippur in terms of numbers of cuneiform tablets was Nineveh, excavated several decades earlier by the English. Hilprecht was hardly an archaeologist by modern standards. Findspots were recorded only in very general terms-and even those notes are often absent, got lost, or refer to objects that can no longer be identified in museum collections.
The Old Babylonian scribal cumculum included several so-called acrographic lexical lists. The def... more The Old Babylonian scribal cumculum included several so-called acrographic lexical lists. The defining characteristic of an acrographic list is that the entries are ordered by their first or main sign. Proto-Izi, Proto-Kagal, and Nigga have been edited by M. Civil in MSL 13. A fourth example, Proto-Sag, was edited by the same author in MSL SS 1. In this paper I will present a late Old Babylonian acrographic list with Akkadian glosses ($1). The evidence from this new source will be used for an analysis of the function of these lists compared to other lexical compositions (52), and discussion of the uses of glosses and Akkadian translations in the Old Babylonian lexical tradition (•˜3), followed by a short conclusion (54). This paper ends with a discussion of the textual history of Nigga (Appendix).
L EXICAL T EXTS FROM J ENA Stahl Field Report 2014 Archaeological Research Facility, UC Berkeley ... more L EXICAL T EXTS FROM J ENA Stahl Field Report 2014 Archaeological Research Facility, UC Berkeley www.escholarship.org/uc/item/6j25593g Niek Veldhuis Near Eastern Studies, UC Berkeley [email protected] In the late nineteenth century Hermann Hilprecht, Professor of Assyriology at the University of Pennsylvania, went to Mesopotamia, then part of the Ottoman Empire, to excavate the city of Nippur. The results of four expeditions (which he directed mostly from a distance) were absolutely stunning – so much so that more than hundred years later we are still in the process of inventorying, reading, and translating the tens of thousands of cuneiform texts and fragments that were found by Hilprecht and his team. The texts range from the late Early Dynastic period (around 2400 BCE) to the Neo-Babylonian period (around 500) and include everything from administrative documents, to letters, literary compositions, and scholarly texts of all kinds. Hilprecht was a very accomplished Assyriologi...
Cultural repertoires: structure, function, and …, 2003
SUMERIAN LITERATURE Niek Veldhuis Introduction The Old Babylonian corpus of Sumerian literary tex... more SUMERIAN LITERATURE Niek Veldhuis Introduction The Old Babylonian corpus of Sumerian literary texts includes a wide varie-ty of types. We may make a rough division into three groups. First, narrative texts relating the adventures of gods and/or men. A distinction ...
A small archive of texts from ancient Iraq is used to demonstrate an approach to network analysis... more A small archive of texts from ancient Iraq is used to demonstrate an approach to network analysis in which traditional close reading and computational text analysis go hand-in-hand. The computational methods produce tables and graphs that link back to online editions of the primary material, enabling the user to check the results.
The present paper describes a group of (mainly lexical) compositions that may be labeled the “Kiš... more The present paper describes a group of (mainly lexical) compositions that may be labeled the “Kiš Corpus.” This corpus, which includes a number of well-known third millennium lexical texts such as ED Lu E and Animals B, as well as some lesser-known compilations such as Practical Vocabulary A, may have functioned as a counterbalance to the venerable ancient written tradition of the South, exemplified by ED Lu A and other lexical texts that went back all the way to the beginning of writing in Archaic Uruk. I will argue that although on the surface the compositions in the Kiš Corpus may seem to be written in Sumerian, in fact these texts were meant to be read in the Semitic language that characterized the Kiš cultural continuum. Royal inscriptions and administrative texts indicate that in the first half of the third millennium Kiš was the most important political and economic center in the north of Babylonia.2 While the information about the political structure of the period is scarce ...
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