UR DYNASTY TABLETS TEXTS CHIEFLY FROM TELLO AND DREHEM WRITTEN DURING THE REIGNS OF DUNGI, BUR-SIN, GIMIL-SIN, AND IBI-SIN INTRODUCTION, CATALOGUE, TRANSLATIONS, LISTS, ARITHMETICAL INDEX, INDEX OF WORDS AND PHRASES, INDEXED SIGN-LIST OF THE UR DYNASTY BY JAMES B. NIES, Ph. D. 64 PLATES AND 27 SEALS WITH AN APPENDIX BY PROF. D. Dr. FRITZ HOMMEL LEIPZIG J. C. HINRICHS'SCHE BUCHHANDLUNG 1920 Assyriologische Bibliothek herausgegeben von Friedrich Delitzsch und Paul Haupt Band XXV Alle Rechte vorbehalten Druck von C. Schulze & Co., G. m. b. H., Grafenhainichen. This book is dedicated to my dear wife without whose constant encouragement it would never have appeared Preface. The manuscript of this volume has been for the most part in the hands of the publisher since the Summer of 1913. The unavoidable delays, due to the interchange of proofs, and the European war, have belated its appearance. Meanwhile, new Sumerian material, such as Pere Scheil's, Les Plus Anciennes Dynasties Connues de Sumer-Accad; Clay's list of the Kings of Isin in the Yale Babylonian Collection; Poebel's Historical and Grammatical Texts from Nippur in the University of Pennsylvania, and works of the highest importance, such as Delitzsch's Sumerian Grammar and Glossary, Barton's Babylonian Writing, Legrain's Le Temps des Rois D'Ur, Hroznys Getreide im Alten *Babylonien, have appeared. It was inevitable that these should, in some degree, modify and, in a few in- stances, change the views of the author while the various sections of this work were going through the press, and this will account for any inconsistencies that may exist between the translations and the lists and indices, as an interval of more than a year elapsed between the time when the former and the latter were through the press. An important modification must here be made. It seems clear from Poebel's Historical Texts that there were several dynasties of Ur, and it is evident that the one to which our texts belong was the last. It was still possible, when this became clear, to designate which dynasty is referred to but, as the original title, Ur Dynasty Tablets, occured in some parts of the book already through the press, it was deemed best not to do so. However, Ur Dynasty Tablets is broad enough to cover the whole field. An effort has been made in this book to set forth and arrange the letter press so as to be helpful for beginners and those who are self-taught. For this reason special attention has been paid to the numerical system by adding an Arithmetical Index and an Index of Values for the sign list, wiile the Index of Words and Phrases, originally of very modest size, has been enlarged so as to cover the whole material of the texts, in the hope that this will add to the interest and usefulness of the work. As for the system of transliteration, it has not been deemed advisable to take account of the so called amissible and inamissible consonants. To his fellow workers in the field of Sumerian research, the author would say that he owes each and every one of them a debt of gratitude for help given by their published works, the names of which will be found in the list of abbreviations. No one can be more alive to the shortcomings of this publication than the author himself, and criticism that will shed further light on the language and trans- actions of the last dynasty of Ur, will be welcomed. Hotel St. George, Brooklyn, Newyork, U. S. A. James B. Nies Contents. Page Preface . , . , . V Abbreviations .... ...... VII I. Introduction ...... · ~..................· ,~~ I3 II. Catalogue........ .,··i·r ... 9 ... III. Translations and Summaries ............... .. .. .L· .. ... ....... ........ .. 37 IV. Lists. i. Names .. .... .. .... I80 2. Deities 97 3. Temples and Buildings 1I00 4. Granaries. 5. Places. 6. Rivers and Canals . ·. .· . ... 103 7. Months ..... .I04 1.. 8. Years. , -,oI05 V. Arithmetical Index .. 07 VI. Index of Words and Phrases ...... ........... ... .... ..... xi51 15 VII. Sign List ........ 173 Unusual Forms of Signs i8i ·· · · · · · · · · · · 0 · Index to the Sign List . I83 Improvements and Corrections I87 ,,Zusatzbemerkungen" by Prof. D. Dr. Fritz Hommel . ... .1o6 Plates 1-64 Abbreviations. AD Stephen Langdon. Tablets from the Archives of Drehem. Paris 1911. AAS Hilprecht. Anniversary Volume. Leipzig I909. ACI A. H. Sayce. Archaeology of the Cuneiform Inscriptions. London 1907. AG A. Jeremias. Handbuch der altorientalischen Geisteskultur. Leipzig 1913. BE Babylonian Expedition of the University of Pennsylvania. Br. R. E. Briinnow. A Classified List of Cuneiform Idiograms. Leyden I889. BW Geo Barton. Origin and Developement of Babylonian Writing. (Beitrage zur Assyriologie usw. hrsg. vou Fr. Delitzsch und P. Haupt, IX. Band, Heft I.) Leipzig 1913. CT Cuneiform Texts in the British Museum. DSG1. Friedrich Delitzsch. Sumerisches Glossar. Leipzig 1914. DSGr. Friedrich Delitzsch. Sumerische Grammatik. Leipzig I914. EBH Hugo Radau. Early Babylonian History. New York 1900. EBL H. V. Hilprecbt. Explorations in Bible Lands. Philadelphia I903. EG R. A. S. MacAlister. The Excavation of Gezer. London 1912. GAB F. Hrozny. Das Getreide im alten Babylonien. Vienna I914. GT Arno Poebel. Grammatical Texts BE, VI. I. Philadelphia 19I4. HG Fritz Hommel. GrundriB der Geographie und Geschichte des Alten Orients. Miinchen 1904. HLC Geo. Barton. Haverford Library Collection. Philadelphia 19go8/o9. HSL Fritz Hommel. Sumerische Lesestiicke. Miinchen 1894. HWB Friedr. Delitzsch. Assyrisches Handworterbuch, Leipzig 1896. JAOS Journal of the American Oriental Society. KG F. H. WeiBbach. Zur keilinschriftlichen Gewichtkunde. Leipzig 1912. KSA L. W. King. History of Sumer and Akkad. Leg. L. Legrain. Le Temps des Rois D'Ur. Paris 1912. LSG Stephen Langdon. Sumerian Grammar. Paris I91I. MI A. T. Clay. Miscellaneous Inscriptions. Yale Oriental Series. Vol. I. MLC III C. E Keiser. Cuneiform Bullae. Vol. I[I. Babylonian Records in the Library of J. P. Morgan. New York I914. MSL J. Dynely Prince. Materials for a Sumerian Lexicon. Leipzig 1908. OBTR Robert J. Lau. Old Babylonian Temple Records. New York 1906. OLZ Orientalistische Literaturzeitung Leipzig. PA T. G. Pinches. The Amherst Tablets. London 1908. PKUN Engelbert Huber. Personennamen aus der Zeit der K6nige von Ur und Nisin. Leipzig 1907. PSBA Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archaeology. RBA M. Jastrow Jr. Religion of Babylonia and Assyria. Boston I898. German revision. Giessen 1912. REC F. Thureau-Dangin. Recherches sur l'origine de l'Ecriture Cun6iforme. Paris 1898. RMA Thompson. Reports of Magicians and Astrologers. London 1900. RTC F. Thureau-Dangin. Recueil de Tablettes Chald6ennes. Paris I903. RU Geo. A. Reisner. Tempelurkunden aus Telloh. Berlin 1901. RUBI W. F6rtsch. Religionsgeschichtliche Untersuchungen usw. Leipzig 1914. Sa, Sb. Syllabaries; see Friedrich Delitzsch. Assyrische Lesestiicke, third, fourth and fifth editions. SAD D. W. Myhrman. Sumerian Administrative Documents. Philadelphia 19Io. SAI Bruno Meifiner. Seltene assyrische Ideogramme. Leipzig 1910. SAKI F. Thureau-Dangin. Die Sumerischen und Akkadischen Konigsinschriften. Leipzig 1907. SCWA William Hayes Ward. Seal Cylinders of Western Asia. Washington I907. SRD W. M. Nesbit. Sumerian Records from Drehem. New York 1914 TD H. de Genouillac. Tablettes de Drehem. Paris I9 I. TrD H. de Genouillac. La Trouvaille de Drehem. Paris 1911. UDT J B. Nies. The present volume. TLeipzig 1919. YBC Yale Babylonian Collection. I. II. III. IV Rawlinson. Cuneiform Inscriptions of Western Asia. a = adjective G. S. = grandson pro, pronoun accd. = according to L. ~ Leit prob. == probably adv. - adverb 1. - line R. and Rev. = reverse B. = brother L. E. _ left edge R. E. = right edge bf. before Lo. E. lower edge r. n. royal name c. = conjunction M. - mother riv. n. =- river name cn. - connective n. noun r. pro. relative pro- Col. _ column nr. number noun comp. compare O. and Obv. Obverse Rt. = right D. - daughter p. and pg. = page S. - son d. = dingir p. p. post position t n. - temple name d. pro. demonstrative pro- p. c. phonetic com- U. E. = upper edge noun plement v. f. - verbal form E. edge pl. = plate v. i. = verbal infix F. - father pl. n. = place name v.p. -p verbal prefix f. n. - field name p. n. - personalname () [ ] = what is bro- G. F. randfather pos. pro. = possessive pro- ken away, supplied, or g. u. - god name noun translated. gr. n. - granary name prep. -- preposition Introduction. The one hundred and eighty autograph texts, from Babylonian tablets of the Ur Dynasty, published in this volume form part of my private collection. Eighty two of them were acquired in Bagdad in 1904 and doubtless were the results of Arabic digging after the close of the French excavations at Tello. The remaining io8 were purchased more recently; io6 in I9rI from a Paris dealer and two in 1913 in New York. Those acquired in 1911 are all from Drehem. -They correspond to tablets published recently by Thureau - Dangin, Genouillac, Langdon and others as from that place. The two purchased in I913 are probably from Jokha. Internal evidence and correspondence to collections already published make the sources of these practically certain, though they were not excavated by responsible people. Those from Tello, t to 90, together with 162 A and 167 A, but excluding Nos. 30, 3I, 33 A, 37 A, 44 and 45 which are from Drehem, also 70 A and 73 A from Jokha, correspond to texts published by Reisner, Thureau-Dangin, Radau, Lau, Barton, Pinches and others. The remainder, except the two from Jokha, are to be classed with Nippur texts of the Ur period, to which they closely correspond. The texts have, so far as possible, been grouped according to their nature and contents, though it was thought desirable not to follow this arrangement with the "case tablets", No 2 to 31, but to keep these together. As may be seen from the catalogue and translations, twenty of them refer to grain transactions, two to sheep and one each to cattle, oil, wool, bread, pitch, pottery, employment of men and contracts for loans of money and grain.