Cuneiform Texts in the Metropolitan Museum of Art: Tablets, Cones, and Bricks of the Third and Second Millennia B.C.

This book is the initial publication in a four-volume series on the collection of cuneiform tablets and inscriptions in the Metropolitan Museum's Department of Ancient Near Eastern Art. It is a scholarly study of objects acquired largely during the 1880s, when the Metropolitan became the first American museum to acquire a substantial number of cuneiform texts. Today the Museum's collection totals more than five hundred texts and fragments; the publication of these volumes will make these texts available in a manner that will instruct and inform as wide an audience as possible. Cuneiform Texts in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Volume I: Tablets, Cones, and Bricks of the Third and Second Millennia B.C. presents 120 commercial texts, legal texts, and letters, along with cones and bricks, from ancient Mesopotamia. This material is offered in both transliteration and translation, with drawings and selected photographs of the tablets as well as descriptions, drawings, and photographs of the seal impressions appearing on them. Features of special interest in this volume include the presentation of Sumerian ledger-account translations in modern accounting formats; allocations for the royal family of the Sumerian king Sulgi of the Third Dynasty of Ur; an Old Babylonian military confrontation with the Kassites, as disclosed in correspondence; Old Assyrian correspondence involving smuggling, moth-eaten textile shipments, legal testimony, and a caravan report presented in both textual translation and modern-ledger format; as well as new collations and translations of Amarna-period royal correspondence. "Volume Four: This long-anticipated work is the final volume of the CTMMA series and completes the publication of all the cuneiform-inscribed tablets and inscriptions (excluding those on sculptures, reliefs, and seals) in the collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Published are 183 texts that include 154 cuneiform tablets and tablet fragments, one inscribed clay bulla, fourteen clay cylinders, five clay prisms, and four stone inscriptions. Economic and Administrative texts are from Sippar, Babylon, Kish, Dilbat, Nippur, Drehem, Uruk, and other sites in Babylonia and ancient Iran. First millennium B.C. royal inscriptions date to the reigns of Ashurnasirpal, Sennacherib, Esarhaddon, Ashurbanipal, Nebuchadnezzar, and Nabonidus. The texts are organized in five parts: Part One contains Neo- and Late Babylonian economic and administrative tablets and fragments from the archives of the Ebabbar temple in Sippar. Part Two includes Neo- and Late Babylonian period economic and administrative tablets from Babylonia and other sites. Part Three includes Late Babylonian administrative and archival tablets from Babylon. Part Four contains royal and non-royal brick, stone, bulla, cylinder, and prism inscriptions from the second and ¬first millennia B.C. A final section (Part Five) includes three proto-cuneiform archaic tablets and two Ur III administrative tablets." -- prové de l'editor Volume One: 120 Ancient Mesopotamian Texts From The Metropolitan Museum's Extensive Collection Of Cuneiform Tablets Are Published Here In A Projected Multi-volume Edition. -- Metropolitan Museum Of Art Website. Volume Two: This Important Scholarly Work Documents 106 Religious, Scientific, Scholastic, And Literary Texts, Written In Sumerian And Akkadian From Cuneiform Tablets In The Collection Of The Metropolitan Museum Of Art. It Is The Second In A Series Of Four Volumes That Will Publish All Of The Museum's More Than Six Hundred Cuneiform Tablets And Fragments. -- Metropolitan Museum Of Art Website. V. 1. Tablets, Cones, And Bricks Of The Third And Second Millennia, B.c. / Edited By Ira Spar -- V. 2. Literary And Scholastic Texts Of The First Millennium B.c. / Edited By Ira Spar And W.g. Lambert -- V. 3. Private Archive Texts From The First Millennium B.c. / Ira Spar And Eva Von Dassow ; With Contributions By J.n. Postgate And Linda B. Bergstein -- V. 4. The Ebabbar Temple Archive And Other Texts From The Fourth To The First Millennium B.c. / Ira Spar And Michael Jursa ; With Contributions By R.k. Englund, G. Frame, U. Gabbay, J.-f. De Laperouse, E.v. Leichty. Includes Bibliographical References And Indexes. Texts Printed In Both Cuneiform And Transliteration; Introduction, Note, Commentary And Translations In English. "Volume Three: co-authored by Ira Spar and Eva von Dassow with contributions by J.N. Postgate and Linda B. Bregstein, admits us to the private worlds of several of the leading financial families of Babylon during the Neo- and Late Babylonian periods of Mesopotamian history and illuminates the management and investment practices of family-run Babylonian enterprises. Four Assyrian tablets included here illustrate business practices during Neo-Assyrian times as well. The 164 texts and fragments that comprise the Museum's holdings from private family archives written during the first millennium B.C. are presented in a format that includes copies, transliterations, and commentary together with drawings, photographs, and commentary on stamp seal, cylinder seal, and ring impressions" -- prové de l'editor