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The Kassite Glyptic of Nippur Zurich Open Repository and Archive University of Zurich Main Library Strickhofstrasse 39 CH-8057 Zurich www.zora.uzh.ch Year: 1992 The Kassite Glyptic of Nippur Matthews, Donalds M Abstract: This catalogue of cylinder seals from Nippur, the religious centre, presents the first substantial body of dated material from the Kassite period, a time of radical change in Babylonian art. The 210 designs, mainly of First Kassite, Pseudo-Kassite, Second Kassite and Common Mitannian style, are illustrated with line drawings, most of which were reconstructed from ancient impressions in the University Museum, Philadelphia. The chronology is placed on a new foundation, and the relationships, development and usage of the styles are discussed. This book, containing a third of all the known Kassite seal designs, be indispensible to all those interested in the art of the Late Bronze Age in Mesopotamia. Posted at the Zurich Open Repository and Archive, University of Zurich ZORA URL: https://doi.org/10.5167/uzh-150405 Monograph Published Version Originally published at: Matthews, Donalds M (1992). The Kassite Glyptic of Nippur. Freiburg, Switzerland / Göttingen, Germany: Universitätsverlag / Vandenhoeck Ruprecht. Donald M. Matthews The Kassite Glyptic of Nippur ORBIS BIBLICUS ORIENTALIS Published by the Biblical Institute of the University of Fribourg Switzerland the Seminar für Biblische Zeitgeschichte of the University of Münster i.W. Federal Republic of Germany and the Schweizerische Gesellschaft für orientalische Altertumswissenschaft Editor: Othmar Keel Coeditors: Erich Zenger and Albert de Pury The author Donald Matthews was born in Edinburgh in 1962 and educated in Scotland. He has excavated in Britain and in Jordan, .Syria and lraq, especially at Tell Mohammed Arab (1983-84), Tell Abu Salabikh (1988) and Tell Brak (1984, 1990). He obtained a B.A. at Cambridge University in Archaeology and Anthropology (1983) and a PhD on Mesopotamian cylinder seals at Cam­ bridge in 1988. The materials for the present volume were collected in Philadelphia and Chicago in 1989. Since 1990 he has been studying third millennium B.C. glyptic from Tell Brak at Oxford University. He is the author of « Principles of Composition in Near Eastern Glyptic of the Later Second Millennium B.C.» (Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis. Series Archeologica 8), Freiburg / Schweiz - Göttingen 1990, and of various scholary articles. Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis 116 Donald M. Matthews The Kassite Glyptic of Nippur lnscriptions by W. G. Lambert Universitätsverlag Freiburg Schweiz Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht Göttingen Die Deutsche Bibliothek- CIP-Einheitsaufnahme Matthews, Donald M.: The Kassiteglypticof Nippur/Donald M. Matthews.-Freiburg, Schweiz: Univ.­ Verl.; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1992 (Orbis biblicus et orientalis; 116) ISBN 3-525-53750-6 (Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht) ISBN 3-7278-0807-1 (Univ.-Verl.) NE: GT Publication subsidized by The British Academy, London and the Swiss Academy of Humanities, Berne © 1992 by Universitätsverlag Freiburg Schweiz Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht Göttingen Paulusdruckerei Freiburg Schweiz ISBN 3-7278-0807-1 (Universitätsverlag) ISBN 3-525-53750-6 (Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht) Digitalisat erstellt durch Florian Lippke, Departement für Biblische Studien, Universität Freiburg Schweiz Contents I. COMMENTARY 1 1. Introduction 1.1 The material 1.2 Description 2 2. The Babylonian tradition 4 2.1 First Kassite 2.2 Pseudo-Kassite 5 2.3 Chronology and development 6 2.4 Survey of the designs 9 2.4.1 Old Babylonian and Northern First Kassite 2.4.2 Central First Kassite 10 2.4.3 The seated figure with cup 13 2.4.4 Pseudo-Kassite 15 2.5 Pseudo-Kassite workshops 24 3. The Second Kassite style 33 3.1 Survey of the designs 3.2 Analysis of Second Kassite 42 4. Minor groups 49 4.1 Second Kassite derivatives 4.2 Mitannian 52 4.3 Levantine and various 54 5. Seal use 55 6. Endpiece 60 II. CAT ALOG UE 63 Sigla and object information Design descriptions 64 Caps 65 K~Ll~ ~ The drawings The inscriptions 67 III. BIBLIOGRAPHY 141 List of abbreviations used in the text List of abbreviations used in the Bibliography 142 PREFACE This research was funded by a British Academy Personal Research Grant and a Fulbright Travel Grant with further support from the Society of Antiquaries of London. I am most grateful to the Society for holding their grant over while the other applications were pending. In Philadelphia everyone at the University Museum did their utmost to be helpful. Professor Ake Sjöberg and Professor Erle Leichty gave me free access to the Tablet Room, a privilege not obtainable in most museums, which was essential in enabling me to search a very large number of tablets for impressions. They were always ready to answer queries and allowed me to use the excellent library in their offices. Hermann Behrens welcomed me when I arrived and was very generous with his time in helping me at a moment when he was beset by a publication deadline. I owe to him, and to Atsuko Hattori, much help with the collection during my stay. Richard Zettler and Maude de Schauensee gave me access to the archaeological collections and allowed me to look at seals and impressions in the basement. Professor Zettler also gave me a dran of bis forthcoming paper on the Nippur glyptic and very generously showed me casts and photographs of his material. Professor J.A. Brinkman invited me to visit Chicago and facilitated my stay there. He showed me the Philadelphia tablets in bis possession and cleared up a number of difficulties in matters Kassite. He proposed that we send a joint Note on no. 61 to N.A.B. U. He bad the best impressions of the Amil-Marduk seal, no. 149, and was able to disentangle its attestations in Istanbul from those of the Rimutu seal, no. 148. Professor Gibson showed me unexpected kindness when I met him in Chicago, giving me free access to the casts and impressions of the glyptic he has discovered at Nippur and allowing me to publish those that are not committed elsewhere. John Nolan and Ray Tindel assisted me with the collection of the Oriental Institute. I am particularly grateful to them for allowing me access to the splendid seal A29349, which I saw in the public gallery. Professor Edith Porada returned some sealings to Philadelphia so that I could study them. lt was my very good fortune that she spent a long time in the Tablet Room with me on two occasions, so that I was able to profit from her experience with the original material before us. Her minute observation suggested a number of significant corrections to my drawings. Later, she invited me to visit New York and did everything possible to make my stay there pleasant. I have also to thank Dr. J.V. Canby, Dr. P. Harper, Dr. M.V. Harris, Dr. Ran Zadok, Fritz Knobloch, Branwen Denton, Bonnie Magness­ Gardiner, Irene Winter, Richard and Maria Ellis, Eva Braun-Holzinger, Michelle Marcus, Darlene Loding, Judy Montgomery-Moore and Eileen Matshiqi for their help, hospitality and conversation while I was in America. In Britain, I am indebted to Dominique Collon, Nicholas Postgate, Roger Moorey, Joan Oates and Alison Wilson for their help at various points in the project. Stephanie Dalley and Dr. J. Oelsner assisted me with some textual problems. The Assyriologists I have consulted are not responsible for any philological errors. Professor W.G. Lambert kindly undertook the editing of the inscriptions at the last moment. The text, translations and immediately associated words (in the Catalogue, after 'Inscription:' in each case) are his sole responsibility. My greatest debt is, as ever, to my parents, and to Frances. For the abbreviations used in the text, see p. 141. For the other conventions used in the Catalogue and the picture captions, see pp. 63-68. 1. COMMENTARY 1. Introduction 1.1 The material The Kassite seals have lang been recognised as a distinct phase in the history of Mesopotamian glyptic, on account of their characteristic royal inscriptions, 1 though some basic aspects of their development remained unrecognised until after the last war (cf. Frankfort 1939, 188). The division by Beran (1957-8) into three groups is the foundation of the present work, with the addition of a fourth group, pseudo-Kassite, whose importance only became clear with the publication of the seals from Choga Zanbil (Porada 1970). In my former study (Matthews 1990, henceforth PC) I collected most of the known Kassite seals and studied their classification, their phylogeny and their principles of composition. I have preferred here with minor sources of seals to give a reference to the illustrations in PC rather than to the original publication, as the detailed arguments here are in any case often dependent on it, and I think that consulting one volume should be less troublesome to the reader. Many of the seals from major sources cited here are also illustrated in PC. lt proved difficult to place the development of the Kassite seals on a sound foundation because of the shortage of dated designs and the restricted period of time to which the known dates belonged (PC pp. 58, 70). At the same time the work of Brinkman (1976) in collecting the extant dated tablets made it clear that even if only a small proportion of them bare impressions this would still represent a major increase in the evidence available. There are only a few hundred surviving Kassite designs (PC p. 55) while Brinkman lists thousands of tablets. These · tablets, however, are still somewhat restricted in chronological scope. The Kassite period, according to ancient tradition and modern convention, lasted for something in the order of half a millennium; but nearly all of the economic texts date from between the reigns of Burnaburias II and Kastilias IV, a span of less than one and a half centuries.
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