Yale Babylonian Collection

Daily Life in Ancient Babylonia: Insights from the Temple of Ishtar - Yale University Press Yuval Levavi­— The Yale Babylonian Collection houses tens of thousands of cuneiform-inscribed artifacts of various sizes, genres, and lengths. It is a treasure trove of the earliest writing cultures, representing... READ MORE

Last days to visit the exhibit “Cyrus: Conqueror, Liberator, Superstar” at Yale Peabody museum.

Celebrated Artist Makes A City Eternal "I don't like to speak," artist Mohamad Hafez said to a packed audience at the Peabody Museum on Friday night. Since he became a public artist, he said, "I wanted my art to speak on…

Just in time for the Rencontre book table!

YOS 24
Yuval Levavi and Elizabeth E. Payne, Late Babylonian Administrative and Legal Texts Concerning Craftsmen, from the Eanna Archive

There is still a lot to be said about lexical texts and the previous posts only scratched the surface. Lexical texts were crucial for scribal education and this is particularly exemplified by the many thousands of short and longer extracts from the first half of the second millennium from scribal centers such as Nippur, Ur, or elsewhere. Even at small sites such as Tell Haddad school tablets containing short extracts from lexical texts are well attested. From all places and times where school exercises can be identified, lexical texts are among them. The Assyrian king Ashurbanipal (r. 669–631 BCE), who amassed an enormous collection of scholarly tablets in his capital Nineveh, also collected all the lexical texts that he could get hold of. Many of our reconstructions of lexical compositions, at least those from the later periods, rely heavily on the often nicely preserved exemplars in his library.

We did not spend much time on the organization of lexical texts. Although to some they seem monotonous and repetitive lists of words or signs, most lexical texts show intricate modes of organizing their entries, be it by semantic connections, phonetic sound, or graphic links between entries.

We also did not address a separate textual genre, which formed an important constituent for scribal education and cannot fully be divorced from lexical texts: lists of personal names. There are quite the number of different compositions listing names; some were used early in the scribe’s basic training, others are more advanced. The image contains a small selection of lists of Sumerian and Akkadian personal names. The keen observer will notice that they do not look so much different to the lexical texts discussed in the previous posts.

For further reading the book History of the Cuneiform Lexical Tradition by Niek Veldhuis (2014) is highly recommended, as is the recent exhibition catalog Back to School in Babylonia edited by Susanne Paulus, which is available here: https://isac.uchicago.edu/research/publications/isacmp1

Photography and drawings by Klaus Wagensonner.

Lexical lists are not only lists of words. There are quite a number of lists that predominantly deal with short phrases. A good example are lists of legal expressions also known as Legal Phrasebooks. These texts contain language that was used in or is reminiscent of Sumerian formulae used in contracts and related texts. Such expressions were put to good use when the scribal student became familiar with legal jargon while copying model contracts in the later parts of his or her basic training. One of these compositions in the first half of the second millennium will eventually be added to the large thematic series Ura discussed earlier and be used in elementary exercises until the late periods (see the section highlighted in red in the third image, a typical late school exercise). The other Phrasebook known in Nippur will morph into a learned series of legal expressions that came down to us in some beautifully written manuscripts from Assyria.

The tablet in the first image is related to such Phrasebooks. It is a short exercise — both sides contain the same selection of entries — of verbal forms. As it is typical of such texts, the scribe went more or less systematically through the paradigm of given Sumerian verbs.

Sumerian morphology, in particular the morphology of the Sumerian verb, is treated in several other texts, which are usually dubbed Grammatical Texts. The bilingual ones among these are of particular importance, even though they represent Sumerian grammar after the language became a language of erudition and scholarship and ceased to be used as vernacular. The tablet in the second image is a short exercise juxtaposing Sumerian verbal forms with their Akkadian equivalents.

Photography and drawing by Klaus Wagensonner.

YPM BC 01959; MLC 1960
YPM BC 023910; YBC 9911
YPM BC 002842; EAH 197

So far, we treated thematic lists and lists concerned with signs. A type of lexical list that shares features of both are lists, whose entries are organized according to the initial sign(s). Scribal students encountered this type of organization already in the early days of their basic training, when they tackled lists of personal names (starting with ur, “servant,” lugal, “king,” lu₂, “man,” geme₂, “maid servant,” etc.). Such acrographic lists are already attested in the earlier phases of the lexical tradition. One of the compositions that emerge in the first half of the second millennium is a text that starts with the entry niĝ₂-gur₁₁, “property.” It is a collection of long sequences of entries that differ by the initial sign that is used.

The large six-sided prism in the first image is a fine manuscript of this long composition. The text is bilingual: the words are on the left; the ones on the right. The beginning of the text is intriguing as it reminds of a proverb: “The property of the king: that which comes in, has no match, (but) that which goes out, does not end.” The same entries occur on the small school exercise in the second image.

Another important list is called Izi = išātu, “fire,” which is attested in many manuscripts. In contrast to the afore-mentioned list, this list is organized by initial sign as well. However, the groups are much shorter. Entries are often accompanied by glosses, which are written in smaller script next to or in between the signs that make up an entry. The nicely preserved manuscript in the third image is a copy of the list Izi.

Both these lists – and several others could be named – belong to the advanced stages of the students’ basic training.

Photography and drawing by Klaus Wagensonner.

YPM BC 026991; YBC 13524
YPM BC 023907; YBC 9908
YPM BC 018729; YBC 4664

The late syllabary in the previous post was part of a series that spanned over eight tablets. This series was known according to its incipit as Ea : A : nâqu, “(the logogram) A (read) /ea/ (means) ‘to cry (out)’.” The list Ea was concerned with single logograms, even though these logograms may be composed of several signs clustered together. It is more or less supplemented by the series Diri : SI.A : atru, “(the logogram group) SI.A (read) /diri/ (means) ‘surplus’.” This latter list contained logogram groups. uses many of such compound signs, all of which also had their different readings and meanings. Both lists were similarly formatted.

Very close to Ea was a series called Aa. Its entries run parallel to those of Ea. However, Aa adds more Akkadian equivalents, which results in a series of forty-two tablets. In the late periods, scholars commented on entries in this series. The tablet in today’s post (see https://ccp.yale.edu/P293337), a commentary, follows the same tabular arrangement of the base text, but contains technical terminology (e.g., šanîš to introduce alternative meanings; highlighted in red). The commentaries on the series Aa exploit sophisticated hermeneutical techniques such as notariqon, known also from later rabbinic exegesis.

An example of this technique appears in the text’s third entry (highlighted in green). Here, a sign with the reading /kisim/ equates to the Akkadian word for “sour milk” (kisimmu; a loan word). The commentator further explains it means (metaphorically) “sheepfold.” The text explains this, using notariqon, by splitting the word kisimmu into syllables and explaining each syllable by an equation; the first two of which are preserved. Thus, the commentator explains that “sour milk” means “sheepfold” “on account of (the fact that Sumerian) KI means ‘depth’ (and Sumerian) SI means ‘sheep’.”

Commentators had the huge pool of lexical equations at their disposal to explain any word or syllable and arrive at such pseudo-etymological explanations.

Photography and drawing by Klaus Wagensonner.

YPM BC 010819; NBC 7832

To help with the reading of Sumerian, one type of lexical list is of particular importance: the syllabary. Syllabaries such as the important list known as Ea are fundamentally sign lists. This composition, which is later organized in a series of seven tablets, and its sister series Aa order the entries in part according to complexity of signs. What makes this text so important is that it is not just a list of signs, but it provides for each Sumerian logogram a reading given in syllabic rendering (e.g., du-ur for the sign KU read dur₂) and a range of Akkadian equivalents. In fact, most of the syllabaries look like Excel spreadsheets. Since every sign can be read in multiple ways, the importance of this and similar syllabaries cannot be understated.

The nicely preserved tablet in the first image dates to the first half of the second millennium BCE. It almost exclusively deals with the sign KU, a sign that has several rather productive readings, and an even higher number of Akkadian equivalents. The text is divided into three subcolumns: the first subcolumn renders the sign value with syllabic signs (highlighted in red), the second subcolumn contains the logogram (highlighted in blue), and the third subcolumn the corresponding Akkadian equivalents (highlighted in green).

By the last third of the second millennium, both Ea and Aa are more or less standardized in a series. The tablet in the second image is also known as the “Yale Syllabary” and dates to the second half of the first millennium BCE. It is a well-written copy of the first tablet of the series Ea. Each side is divided into two columns, which themselves provide the information in four subcolumns. The overall organization follows a similar layout as the previous example, but now adds additional information, namely a “sign name” or analytical rendering of the logogram in question (highlighted in orange in the third image).Such sign names used a highly technical jargon to describe even the most complex signs.

Photography and drawing by Klaus Wagensonner.

YPM BC; YBC 7158
YPM BC; YBC 2176

From the earliest periods onwards there were lists that sought to organize the many cuneiform characters in a meaningful way. Noteworthy are the so-called “Sign lists” of the mid-third millennium BCE. This and the following two posts will deal with Syllabaries. There are quite a number of syllabaries from the early second millennium onwards. For Sumerologists, i.e., scholars who study the Sumerian language, an insular language, lexical lists are a treasure trove, and syllabaries are an important key to read Sumerian texts. As we will see, syllabaries provide the sign values for individual signs as well as their meaning in Akkadian.

The text in today’s post does nothing like that. It is a lexical text of a very different type. In 52 neatly written lines the scribe of this tablet wrote out all the signs, roughly 470 in total. A unique feature (except for taking the abecedaries of Ugarit into account) is the text’s layout. The signs are “listed” as a continuous text. None of the signs is annotated or adds any information beyond the graphical shape of the sign itself. The scribe (or scholar) responsible for this text, organized the sign forms in a particular way, which cannot be found anywhere else at the moment. The text starts off with several lines of signs, which start with a cluster of oblique wedges. Why does the tablet start off with such complex signs? A possible explanation is the fact that many scholarly texts of this period bear a short dedication to the patron goddess of writing, Nisaba, often inserted on the top edge of the text. The first two signs on the tablet, ŠE and ŠUM₂, resemble, taken together, the writing of the goddess’ name. In other parts of the text, the scribe groups together signs that are formed based on animal heads, or signs that use a certain matrix or frame. We can assume that the “author” of this remarkable text was highly trained. Even complex sign forms are written in a meticulous hand.

Photography and drawing by Klaus Wagensonner.

YPM BC 018680; YBC 4615

Like the Professions list in the previous post, most of the archaic lists and their successors in the third millennium BCE were thematic, i.e., each list dealt with one or several topics. Lexical texts “described” the world around them: fish, birds, trees, plants, vessels, metal objects, even pigs, were listed and meticulously copied again and again. By the early second millennium, the lexical corpus saw several novelties, among which was a larger thematic series that was divided into six chapters and which is referred to as Ura (ur₅.ra = hubullu, “interest-bearing loan”). By the latter part of the second millennium this list grew to a massive series of twenty-four chapters (or tablets) containing thousands of entries.

The round tablets in the first image are short school exercises with extracts from this thematic series. Usually these short exercises contained an instructor’s model text on the flat obverse and the student’s copy on the buckled reverse. The left upper tablets lists three star names; below are three river names. In the right upper corner are different types of jars and designations for gold beneath it.

The quite large rectangular tablet in the second image is a rather complete, albeit slightly damaged copy of Chapter 3 of the series dealing with domestic animals. The tablet’s surface is subdivided into five narrow columns. About half of the obverse contains designations on sheep (udu; highlighed in red), followed by the ewe (u₈; highlighted in green), lamb (sila₄; highlighted in blue), female goat (ud₅; highlight in orange), and goat (maš₂; highlighted in magenta). The tablet’s reverse deals with cattle, equids, the pig, and finally a few entries on wild animals. The section on sheep is the longest.

Photography and drawing by Klaus Wagensonner.

YPM BC 036462; NCBT 1917
YPM BC 023909; YBC 9910
YPM BC 021395; YBC 7330
YPM BC 036443; NCBT 1898
YPM BC 018744; YBC 4679

The earliest texts that can be identified as scholarly or lexical appear pretty much contemporaneously with the earliest forms of writing in Mesopotamia around 3300 or 3200 BCE. Among the roughly 5,000 archaic texts known to date (most of which were found in Uruk), about 700 are lexical. Indeed, among this large batch of tablets thirteen compositions could be identified, which were copied multiple times in part or in full and which later were disseminated throughout Mesopotamia and beyond. The importance of these compositions cannot be underestimated. They provided writing conventions and were probably essential for the success of cuneiform script beyond the archaic period.

Although the Yale Babylonian Collection does not house any examples of the archaic lists, one nicely preserved seven-sided prism dating to some point in the last third of the third millennium BCE contains a copy of the most-copied composition in the third millennium: the Standard Professions List. The qualification “standard” here is quite apt, as this list stayed widely unchanged since the end of the fourth millennium. The list contains professions and titles of high officials in the social stratigraphy of Uruk in the archaic period. Despite its antiquity and the fact that most of its designations became out-of-date, the text was copied faithfully throughout the third millennium and into the second millennium BCE. In the 24th century, scribes in Ebla, Syria, also selected specific signs attested in this composition and provided a “phonetic” rendering (e.g., ub-bi-sa-ga-im for UMBISAG, a term for an administrative scribe). The scribe, who wrote the text on this prism, was rather accomplished. Many of the signs are truly “calligraphic.”

But already throughout the third millennium new lists of professions were compiled, which formed their own tradition. The second image shows a text, which was compiled in the first half of the second millennium. A great number of entries in this text, each starting with the sign LU₂, “man/person” (highlighted in red), is also translated into Akkadian. This composition is known, based on its first entry, as Lu-Azlag, “fuller.”

Photography by Klaus Wagensonner

YPM BC 016758; YBC 2125
YPM BC 012799; NBC 9830

Lists were omnipresent in the cuneiform textual record, be it a list of workers assigned to perform a task, a list of cattle delivered into the temple, or lists of year names used by administrators as an aide-memoire. But there is a particular type of list, which this and the subsequent posts will tackle: the lexical list. This term is used as an umbrella term for any type of scholarly list containing words and expressions. Often such lexical lists are easily recognizable by the use of so-called classifiers or determinatives. This is a group of signs, which help assign a word to a specific semantic field. The sign KU₆ representing a basic type of fish flags designations of fish; the sign MUŠEN representing water fowl is found with bird designations; the sign KI flags place names. The two tablets in the second image contain a sign for stone (read NA₄) at the beginning of each entry. Curiously, only one of these two texts is a lexical text. Despite both texts listing different types of stones, the example on the left is a lexical list, but the example on the right is a list of stones that was used to prepare an amulet or magical charm to protect against evil. At first glance, however, not much sets these two texts apart. They are similarly formatted and the entries are flagged by a classifier.

Many lexical texts or word lists show another feature: each entry can be marked by a vertical (in the archaic and Early Dynastic periods horizontal) single impression. As we will see in some of the posts that follow, list entries do not appear arbitrarily; there are many organizational principles in place that help structure lists and make them more memorable such as organizing list entries by initial sign or other graphical similarities. At least from the second millennium BCE onwards (but likely already in the archaic period) lists were an important tool in scribal education.

Photography by Klaus Wagensonner

YPM BC 021030; YBC 6966
YPM BC 002641; MLC 2693

A new week, a new guest!

Eric Cline and Glynnis Fawkes set to talk about „1177 BC: The Collapse and Survival of Civilization“

The Assyrian king Assurnasirpal II (reigned 883-859 BCE) was the first king who extensively decorated the walls of his new palace in Nimrud, ancient Kalhu, with carved stone slabs. While the original purpose of these so-called orthostats was to protect the mudbrick walls from erosion, these slabs served as apt canvas for royal propaganda in the first millennium BCE. Several rooms of Assurnasirpal’s palace were decorated with slabs depicting the king victorious in battle or at the hunt. The visual program could be found in his throne room (Room B), but also in a suite of rooms in the west wing that appear to have been used by foreign delegations. Other rooms showed the king protected by supernatural beings. Each slab was over 2m in height, and at roughly mid-height runs the so-called Standard Inscription, which details the inauguration of the palace with sumptuous festivities.

The two relief fragments in the video were originally part of one slab that was mounted in Room I of the palace. Room I was an L-shaped space situated next to the throne room, even though there was no direct access to the throne room itself (see the plan in the second image). The floor was lined with stone slabs, some of which had drains. This suggests that the room may have been used for purification rituals involving the king. The decoration of the wall slabs was a repetitive band of winged genies, one human-headed, the other eagle-headed, who flank a sacred tree carrying a cone and a bucket, implements used for purification.

Like all other reliefs throughout the palace these were originally brightly colored. Modern scientific pigment trace analyses help reconstruct the original coloring of these reliefs. The transition to reconstructed coloring can be seen in the video, which is part of the display installation .

Video and drawings by Klaus Wagensonner.

YUAG 1854.3
YUAG 1854.4+5
Yale University Art Gallery

Happy Opening Day, Peabody museum! The second floor boasts many new and exciting galleries. Among others many highlights from the Yale Babylonian Collection. Watch out for our Instagram where we soon are going to feature some of them.

Our RTI camera dome moved from my desk to the much less dusty Peabody museum where it can be used by many divisions in the future.

https://www.ctpublic.org/show/where-we-live/2023-12-04/mohamad-hafez-installs-eternal-cities-at-the-new-yale-peabody-museum?fbclid=IwAR3wuXk1Lh05kWY91-kzUZtgNoyw1Ti4eF48zZzpfbML4MDNt2BEn83W7Bw

Mohamad Hafez installs 'Eternal Cities' at the new Yale Peabody Museum This hour, we get a sneak preview of one of the new exhibits at the Yale Peabody Museum, set to reopen in early 2024. Mohamad Hafez's "Eternal Cities" features miniature replicas of Babylonian artifacts, bridging the millennia between ancient Mesopotamia and present-day Syria. He joins us.

You may already know that we have a wealth of documents detailing the cultivation of grains and the management of livestock in . But did you know that a distinct element of cuisine in addition to these staples was an almost inexhaustible access to sweetener? While pre-modern societies were largely restricted to tree sap and honey for sweetening their food, people in also cultivated the native date palm (Akkadian gišimmarum), whose fruits (Akkadian suluppum) could be consumed fresh or preserved as dried dates, syrup and meal that was mashed, pressed, fermented and ground. The caloric value of dates is exceptionally high, and the palm takes advantage of the waterline ecosystem of rivers and canals, while preserving canal banks and providing shade for adjacent vegetable patches. Its value in ancient Mesopotamia cannot be understated, and images of the date palm feature frequently in Mesopotamian reliefs and seals. In the image above, showing a terracotta fragment of a plaque from the Old Babylonian period (early second millennium BCE), a man can be seen climbing a date palm and harvesting its fruit, while another man is tending to the tree with a hoe.

Photographs by Klaus Wagensonner

YPM BC 038195; YBC 10020
YPM BC 037319; NCBS 422
YPM BC 012340; NBC 9345
YPM BC 037346; NCBS 449