Cuneiform Inscriptions in the Collection of the Bible Lands Museum Jerusalem Cuneiform Monographs
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Cuneiform Inscriptions in the Collection of the Bible Lands Museum Jerusalem Cuneiform Monographs General Editors t. abusch – m.j. geller s.m. maul – f.a.m. wiggermann VOLUME 33 Cuneiform Inscriptions in the Collection of the Bible Lands Museum Jerusalem The Old Babylonian Inscriptions By Joan Goodnick Westenholz and Aage Westenholz BRILL LEIDEN · BOSTON 2006 This book is printed on acid-free paper. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on http://catalog.loc.gov ISSN 0929-0052 ISBN-10 90 04 14710 1 ISBN-13 978 90 04 14710 2 © Copyright 2006 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill Academic Publishers, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, and VSP. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Brill provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910 Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. printed in the netherlands TABLE OF CONTENTS acknowledgements vii abbreviations ix list of plates x catalogue of texts xi concordance of museum numbers xii notes on the transliteration and translation xiii PART I. No. 1: LARSA “RITUAL” TABLET A. The Text 3 B. The Gods 8 C. The Cult 19 D. The Priesthood, Cultic Functionaries, and Temple Staff 27 E. Prosopography 34 F. Transliteration, Translation and Philological Notes 38 PART II. ROYAL INSCRIPTIONS Introduction 85 No. 2: Dedicatory Cones of Isme-Daganˇ 87 No. 3: Dedicatory Cones of Lipit-Istarˇ 89 No. 4: Barrel Cylinder of Sîn-iddinam 93 No. 5: Foundation Tablet of R¯ım-Sîn 101 PART III. ADMINISTRATIVE DOCUMENTS No. 6: Administrative Text: Account of Silver Payments 107 No. 7: Juridical Text: Real Estate Sale 111 No. 8: Administrative Text: Account of Delivery of Silver 115 No. 9: Administrative Text: Ledger with Tabulated Bookkeeping 119 v Table of Contents bibliography 131 indices Index of Divine Names 148 Index of Personal Names 148 Index of Place Names 151 Index of Words 153 plates 157 vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This volume aims to provide a complete annotated edition of the tablets and inscribed objects dating from the Old Babylonian period now in the Lands of the Bible Archaeology Foundation and the Borowski Collection, housed in the Bible Lands Museum Jerusalem. We thank the director of the Bible Lands Museum Jerusalem for permission to publish these tablets and objects. The project of publishing these texts began from an investigative study of the Larsa “Seven-Day” Ritual in 1993. With a new copy and new interpretations, we felt obliged to provide the scholarly world with an updated version of this most important and unique text. The following friends and colleagues have assisted this project by providing advice and comments: Judy Bjorkman, Christian Dykhoff, Uri Gabbay, Herman Hunger, Erica Reiner, Marcel Sigrist and Marten Stol. We most sincerely acknowl- edge our debt to the pioneering work of Prof. William W. Hallo and his student Edwin Kingsbury on the Larsa tablet upon whose fundamental groundwork we have built. Our profound gratitude is due to the Bible Lands Museum Jerusalem for bring- ing Aage Westenholz from Copenhagen in October 1993 and in July 2004 to repair the damage that the tablets had undergone in shipment from Canada, to treat the tablets and bake them. From this intense work on the tablets, allow- ing final joins, new updated and much improved readings of the tablets were made possible. This work was done with the aid and assistance of the conser- vators of the Museum’s conservation department—Orna Cohen and Regula Müller- Shacham. The copies of the tablets were made by Aage Westenholz (no. 1) and Takayoshi Oshima (no. 9). Their dedication to painstaking details makes the copies reliable and trustworthy. In particular, Aage Westenholz has expended enormous effort in checking, rechecking and updating his copies of the Larsa tablet. We acknowledge with many thanks our heartfelt indebtedness to Moshe Caine for providing us with such superb photographs of all the tablets, published in this volume courtesy of the Bible Lands Museum Jerusalem. We are most grateful to John Sanders of the Oriental Institute, University of Chicago, for help with preparing electronic figures of the cuneiform copies. Furthermore, we would like to express our deep appreciation to all those who worked with us to prepare this volume. In particular, we are indebted to the members and interns of the curatorial department, without whose persistence and steadfastness this volume would not have seen the light of day—Filip Vukosavovic,´ who researched both the administrative documents and royal inscriptions mentioned in the documents, writing up the resultant information, and composing drafts of philological notes, and Takayoshi Oshima, who provided the copy and preliminary transliteration of no. 9. We are also highly appreciative of the time and effort put into the manuscript by Noga Ayali and Jennifer Kaufman, who researched many points and checked references. The indices were made by Jennifer Kaufman and vii Acknowledgements Filip Vukosavovic;´ the bibliographical references were prepared and checked by Dustin Nash. We wish to offer our grateful thanks to Lindsey Taylor-Guthartz, who shouldered the thankless task of editing the manuscript and to whose meticulous reading of the text, efficiency, and accuracy we are most beholden. Special credit is due to Ann Guinan, senior editor at Styx Publications, who spent many strenuous hours working with us every step of the way to make this publication possible. We are most grateful to Brill Academic Publishers and their acquisitions editor, Michiel Klein Swormink, for agreeing to publish this book in the Cuneiform Monograph series; to Katherine Lou, the assistant editor, who handled the myriad details that went into the publication; to Michael Mozina, the internal production editor in charge of the editorial work and typesetting of our manuscript; and to all the staff of Brill / Styx Publishing. The gratitude of all concerned with this project is extended to our director, Batya Borowski, who supported the project throughout. Finally, we would like to dedicate our volume in memory of Dr. Elie Borowski, founder of the Bible Lands Museum Jerusalem, who first saw a pile of tablet fragments and had the vision to realize their significance. In his own words, the Larsa tablet (no. 1 in this volume) is “the most important document and historical treasure for the calendar of the Bible as well as for ancient history of the cradle of mankind”. Joan Goodnick Westenholz Jerusalem/Chicago 2005 Aage Westenholz Copenhagen 2005 viii ABBREVIATIONS Le.E. = Left Edge Lo.E. = Lower Edge Ri.E. = Right Edge Up.E. = Upper Edge Bibliographic Abbreviations All abbreviations are those of The Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago (Chicago: Oriental Institute, 1956–) and The Sumerian Dic- tionary of the University Museum of the University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia: The University Museum, 1984–), with the following exceptions and additions: BLMJ = Sigla of objects in the Bible Lands Museum Jerusalem C = Sigla of cuneiform objects in the Bible Lands Museum Jerusalem ETCSL = Black, J.A., Cunningham, G., Ebeling, J., Flückiger-Hawker, E., Robson, E., Taylor, J., and Zólyomi, G., The Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature (http://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/), Oxford: 1998–. LEB = Loan from the Elie Borowski Collection Other Abbreviations Gu = Gungunum Ha = Hammurabi RiSi = R¯ım-Sîn Si = Samsu-iluna WS = Warad-Sîn ix LIST OF PLATES I–XX No. 1: Larsa Ritual Tablet (BLMJ 3127) XXI–XXIII No. 2: Royal Inscription of Isme-Daganˇ of Isin (BLMJ 3938, BLMJ 3940, BLMJ 4159) XXIV No. 3: Royal Inscription of Lipit-Istarˇ of Isin (BLMJ 65m) XXV–XXVI No. 4: Royal Inscription of Sîn-iddinam of Larsa (BLMJ 4158) XXVII No. 5: Royal Inscription of R¯ım-Sîn of Larsa (BLMJ 931) XXVIII No. 6: Administrative Document: Account of Silver Payments (BLMJ 603) XXIX No. 7: Juridical Document: Real Estate Sale (BLMJ 4154) XXX No. 8: Administrative Document: Account of Delivery of Silver (BLMJ 3941) XXXI–XXXIII No. 9: Administrative Document: Ledger with Tabulated Bookkeeping (BLMJ 65h) x CATALOGUE OF TEXTS Text No. Tablet No. Accession No. Contents 1 C47 BLMJ 3127 Larsa ritual tablet 2 LEB 146 BLMJ 3938 Royal inscription: Isme-Daganˇ of Isin LEB 148 BLMJ 3940 LEB 177 BLMJ 4159 3 C48 BLMJ 65m Royal inscription: Lipit-Istarˇ of Isin 4 LEB 176 BLMJ 4158 Royal inscription: Sîn-iddinam of Larsa 5 C12 BLMJ 931 Royal inscription: R¯ım-Sîn of Larsa 6 HC15 BLMJ 603 Administrative document: account of silver payments 7 LEB 172 BLMJ 4154 Juridical document: real estate sale 8 LEB 149 BLMJ 3941 Administrative document: account of delivery of silver 9 C11 BLMJ 65h Administrative document: ledger with tabulated bookkeeping xi CONCORDANCE OF MUSEUM NUMBERS Object Accession No. Text No. Accession No. Object Text No. C 11 BLMJ 65h 9 BLMJ 65h C 11 9 C 12 BLMJ 931 5 BLMJ 65m C 48 3 C 47 BLMJ 3127 1 BLMJ 603 HC 15 6 C 48 BLMJ 65m 3 BLMJ 931 C 12 5 HC 15 BLMJ 603 6 BLMJ 3127 C 47 1 LEB 146 BLMJ 3938 2 BLMJ 3938 LEB 146 2 LEB 148 BLMJ 3940 2 BLMJ 3940 LEB 148 2 LEB 149 BLMJ 3941 8 BLMJ 3941 LEB 149 8 LEB 172 BLMJ 4154 7 BLMJ 4154 LEB 172 7 LEB 176 BLMJ 4158 4 BLMJ 4158 LEB 176 4 LEB 177 BLMJ 4159 2 BLMJ 4159 LEB 177 2 xii NOTES ON THE TRANSLITERATION AND TRANSLATION The numbering and marking of homophones is according to R.