Pp. 3–8: “A Sargonic Learner’s Tablet with an Invocation of the Goddess Nisaba,” by Hanan A. Al-esawee and Abdulmukrem M. Alezzi

This paper derives from the study of confiscated texts in the Iraq Museum. Here we publish an Umma tablet with the accession number IM 205090, a square school text with three columns on one side and a single one on the other that lists the distribution of very large quantities of silver to various people; it concludes with an invocation to the goddess Nisaba by the learner, who describes himself as an apprentice scribe.

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Pp. 9–70: “In Search of Dugurasu,” by Maria Giovanna Biga and Piotr Steinkeller

The identity of the toponym Dugurasu, which is mentioned some fifty times in the ED IIIb documentation from Ebla, is a highly contested issue. While M. G. Biga had proposed an identification with Egypt, A. Archi then argued that Dugurasu was situated in northwestern Iran. This study offers a systematic examination of all the attestations of Dugurasu, focusing on the types of materials traded between Dugurasu and Ebla. It also considers evidence bearing on Ebla’s commercial partner named DUlu. Characteristically, Ebla and DUlu exchanged the same types of goods as those traded between Ebla and Dugurasu. Our investigation strongly suggests that Dugurasu is either Egypt itself or some place in Palestine that served as an intermediary in exchanges between Egypt and Ebla, while DUlu denotes either Byblos or one of its immediate neighbors.

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Pp. 71–87: “By Order of the King: Ammi-Ditana’s Letter on the Provision of Fodder Barley for the Sheep and Oxen of the Nakkamtum,” by Caroline Janssen

Di 1353 is a letter by King Ammi-ditana of Babylon to the chief lamentation priest of Annunītum. It contains a simple instruction to provide fodder for the oxen and the sheep of a temple storehouse, the nakkamtum. One wonders though what this direct intervention meant on a pragmatic level. The king does not explain himself. But this question can be approached from different angles. What do we know so far about the relation between the palace and the nakkamtum? Does this letter fit into a pattern of royal letter writing? Can we benefit from the fact that we have an archival context for this letter?

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Pp. 89-102: “HS 200B: A Bridal Gift (Tuppu Bibli) from the First Sealand Dynasty,” by Jacob Jan de Ridder

An unusual tablet from the Hilprecht-Sammlung in Jena describes the biblu, “bridewealth,” paid for a girl at her betrothal. Paleographic features and onomastic arguments suggest that the text may be dated to the late Sealand I period, with similarities to documents from the reigns of the Kings Pešgaldarameš and Ayadaragalama. A first edition is offered together with a brief introduction detailing its legal context and historical setting.

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Pp. 103-119: “A New Reading of the Middle Elamite Text Shun I 9,” by Jalil Bakhtiari

There are four complete or almost complete unprovenanced bricks and twenty-one brick fragments from the site of Toll-e Bard-e Karegar in Khuzestan belonging to the only Elamite inscription mentioning the god Kamul. All of them represent exemplars of the one and the same text (ShuN I 9), written in the name of the Elamite king Shutruk-Nahhunte I (ca. 1190–1155 BCE). The text describes a temple that the king had rebuilt and dedicated to the god Kamul. In this article, a new reading and translation of the last sentence of the text that is divided into four sections and compared with parallels in Old and Middle-Elamite texts, is suggested. In addition, the brick fragments TBK 16 and 28 are reread and classified and TBK 89, 114, 122, and 127 are published.

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Pp. 121-134: “Elamite War Chariots and Military Equipment At Ancient Kabnak (ca. 1400 bce),” by Javier Álvarez-Mon and Yasmina Wicks

After entering the second millennium BCE as a military superpower, Elam faded into historical obscurity upon its withdrawal from the broader Near Eastern political scene in 1763 BCE and only reemerged much later as a major player with a sequence of incursions in Mesopotamia beginning in the thirteenth century and culminating in the 1155 BCE fall of the Kassites. During the intervening centuries, neither written nor archaeological sources offer clear signs that Elamite territory had come under the authority of any foreign power. Here the authors propose that a reexamination of evidence from the ancient settlement of Kabnak (modern Haft Tepe), approximately seventeen kilometers southeast of the Elamite lowland capital of Susa, discloses a mid-fifteenth to mid-fourteenth century BCE state-controlled arsenal of war chariots and weaponry that may hold a key to comprehending Elam’s apparent continued resistance to outside forces and its rise as a military superpower in the thirteenth century.

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Pp. 135-178: “Keeping Alive Dead Knowledge: Middle Assyrian Glass Recipes in the Yale Babylonian Collection,” by Shiyanthi Thavapalan

Although they describe Bronze Age technologies and techniques,the Akkadian glassmaking texts are primarily known through later copies from Ashurbanipal’s libraries. The first portion of this paper provides editions of three fragments of previously unknown glass texts from the Middle Assyrian period and examines how and why they came to be written down. The second portion discusses metaphors concerning kinship and bodily experience that explain the relationship between the glassmaker in Mesopotamia, his tools, and his creative process. It is argued here that only by embracing the entire context of the craft process—this includes the behaviors chosen during manufacture as well as the allusions made to social relationships through language, performance, and materials—can we begin to appreciate how knowledge about technologies was transmitted.

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Pp. 179-191: “Inscribed Bullae Found during Excavations on the Northern Slope of Ayanis Fortress in 2015 and a New Urartian Building Name, ÉTamali,” by Kenan Işık, Oğuz Aras, and Ayşegül Akın Aras

The 2014 season of excavations at the Ayanis Fortress of the Urartian Kingdom, located on the eastern shore of Lake Van, revealed a trash layer on the northern slope of the fortress that contained densely packed animal bone remains as well as several inscribed bullae. During the excavations carried out in the same area in 2015 four more inscribed bullae were recovered in the northern fortification wall. This article provides information on the 2015 excavations of the outer side of the northern fortifications and trash layer at Ayanis, with a first edition of the new bullae. These short inscriptions mention the names of people, cities, countries, and professions, as is common in such Urartian bullae. The inscription on a newly discovered bulla mentioning a construction named tamali is important as it informs us about a new building unit whose function is unknown at present.

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Pp. 193-209: “Ancient Mesopotamian Divinatory Series from the British Museum: New Texts and Joins,” by Nicla De Zorzi

This paper contains editions of three previously unpublished omen texts and one commentary text from the collections of the British Museum. BM 36165 and BM 34999 are Late Babylonian manuscripts of Šumma ālu tablet 1 while K 6260 is a join to Šumma izbu tablet 4. BM 47684+ is part of a large Late Babylonian four-column tablet containing a new commentary on physiognomic omens. The edition of these tablets is accompanied by an extensive commentary that discusses the placement of the tablets within the divinatory series, as well as orthographic and interpretative issues.

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Pp. 211-245: “Minor Archives from First-Millennium BCE Babylonia, Part II: The Balīḫû Archive,” by Ludovica Cecilia and Johannes Hackl

The article presents editions of all known texts belonging to the archive of the Sipparean prebendary Marduk-bēlšunu, son of Nabû-balāssu-iqbi, that is, the Balīḫû archive. It is the second part of a series of articles that aims to make available the so-called satellite archives of the Ṣāḫiṭ-ginê A archive (“Marduk-rēmanni archive”) and related and unrelated smaller archives from Sippar, all dating to the long sixth century BCE.

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