Cuneiform Texts Cappadocian Tablets
CUNEIFORM TEXTS FROM CAPPADOCIAN TABLETS IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM. PART I. (Plates 1-50.) PRINTED) BY ORDER OF THE TRUSTEES. SOLD AT THE BRITISH MUSEUM; AND AT LONGMANS & Co., 39, PATERNOSTER ROW; BERNARD QUARITCH, II, GRAFTON STREET, NEW BOND STREET, W. KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRUBNER & CO., CARTER LANE, E.C.; AND HUMPHREY MILFORD, OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS, AMEN CORNER, LONDON. I92I. [ALL RIGHTS RESER VED.] HARRISON AND SONS, LTI)., PRINTERS IN ORDINARY TO HIS MAJESTY, ST. MARTIN'S LANE, LONDON, W.C. 2. THE present volume contains copies of ninety-nine complete texts selected from the series of "Cappadocian" tablets, which were acquired by the Trustees of the British Museum in the year 1919. These texts are of great importance historically and linguistically, for they deal with the commercial transactions of a settlement of Semitic traders who flourished in the region of Caesarea, in the neighbourhood of Mount Argaeus, in the twenty-fourth century before Christ. In view of the evidence available as to the origin of the tablets, it seems probable that this settlement was only one of many which existed at that period in the country which lies between Boghaz-Keui in the 'north and the district of the Khabur and the city of Ashur in the south. When this Semitic settlement was established, and how long it flourished, cannot be said, but there seems always to have been a Semitic element, large or small, in the population of the country north of the Taurus. There is a Semitic element in the Hittite cuneiform writing as we know it in the fourteenth and thirteenth centuries before Christ, and many Greek writers assert the existence of '" Syrians," $VpcOL, or "white Syrians," AEvKoo-vpOL, between the Gulf of Issus and the Black Sea.
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