Cover of Cuneiform Texts in The Metropolitan Museum of Art Volume IV: The Ebabbar Temple Archive and Other Texts from the Fourth to the First Millenium B.C.

Cuneiform Texts in The Metropolitan Museum of Art Volume IV: The Ebabbar Temple Archive and Other Texts from the Fourth to the First Millennium B.C.

Spar, Ira and Michael Jursa
2014
514 pages
174 illustrations
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This long-anticipated work is the final volume of the CTMMA series and completes the publication of all the cuneiform-inscribed tablets and inscriptions (excluding those on sculptures, reliefs, and seals) in the collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Published are 183 texts that include 154 cuneiform tablets and tablet fragments, one inscribed clay bulla, fourteen clay cylinders, five clay prisms, and four stone inscriptions.

Economic and Administrative texts are from Sippar, Babylon, Kish, Dilbat, Nippur, Drehem, Uruk, and other sites in Babylonia and ancient Iran. First millennium B.C. royal inscriptions date to the reigns of Ashurnasirpal, Sennacherib, Esarhaddon, Ashurbanipal, Nebuchadnezzar, and Nabonidus. The texts are organized in five parts: Part One contains Neo- and Late Babylonian economic and administrative tablets and fragments from the archives of the Ebabbar temple in Sippar. Part Two includes Neo- and Late Babylonian period economic and administrative tablets from Babylonia and other sites. Part Three includes Late Babylonian administrative and archival tablets from Babylon. Part Four contains royal and non-royal brick, stone, bulla, cylinder, and prism inscriptions from the second and ¬first millennia B.C. A final section (Part Five) includes three proto-cuneiform archaic tablets and two Ur III administrative tablets.

Professors Ira Spar (Professor of Ancient Studies at Ramapo College of New Jersey and Research Assyriologist at The Metropolitan Museum of Art) and Michael Jursa (University Professor of Assyriology, University of Vienna) were assisted by a team of distinguished scholars and conservators who provided valuable insights into the preparation of scholarly editions of the texts, seal impressions, and technical analysis published in this volume. Ira Spar hand copied and made facsimile drawings of the Museum’s texts with the assistance of Charles H. Wood. Jo Ann Wood-Brown and Charles H. Wood prepared drawings of seal impressions and divine symbols.

This four-volume series of publications reaffirms the Museum’s ongoing commitment to promoting wider knowledge of ancient Near Eastern civilizations. Volume one documents 120 tablets, cones, and bricks from the third and second millennia B .C. Volume two publishes 106 religious, scientific, scholastic, and literary texts written in Akkadian and Sumerian that primarily date to the later part of the ¬first millennium B.C. Volume three includes 164 private archival texts and fragments from the first millennium B .C.

Cuneiform tablet: promissory note for silver, Ebabbar archive, Clay, Assyrian
Assyrian
ca. 626 BCE
Cuneiform tablet: promissory note for reeds and sheep, Ebabbar archive, Clay, Assyrian
Assyrian
ca. 627 BCE
Cuneiform tablet: promissory note for silver for purchase of sheep, Ebabbar archive, Clay, Babylonian
Babylonian
ca. 612 BCE
Cuneiform tablet: contract for workmen, Ebabbar archive, Clay, Babylonian
Babylonian
ca. 591 BCE
Cuneiform tablet: account of delivery of halilu-tools, Ebabbar archive, Clay, Babylonian
Babylonian
ca. 604–562 BCE
Cuneiform tablet: account of work obligations and halilu-tool allocations, Ebabbar archive, Clay, Babylonian
Babylonian
ca. 626–539 BCE
Cuneiform tablet: promissory note for barley, Ebabbar archive, Clay, Babylonian
Babylonian
ca. 553 BCE
Cuneiform tablet: account regarding temple sheep, Ebabbar archive, Clay, Achaemenid
Achaemenid
ca. 519 BCE
Cuneiform tablet: fragment of an imittu-promissory note for dates, Ebabbar archive, Clay, Babylonian
Babylonian
ca. 626–539 BCE
Cuneiform tablet: account of workmen, Ebabbar archive, Clay, Babylonian
Babylonian
ca. 598 BCE
Cuneiform tablet: account, Ebabbar archive, Clay, Babylonian
Babylonian
ca. 626–539 BCE
Cuneiform tablet: allocation account, Ebabbar archive, Clay, Babylonian
Babylonian
ca. 626–539 BCE
Cuneiform tablet: list of workmen, Ebabbar archive, Clay, Achaemenid
Achaemenid
ca. 522–486 BCE
Cuneiform tablet impressed with seal: account of archers for military service, Ebabbar archive, Clay, Achaemenid
Achaemenid
ca. 514 BCE
Cuneiform tablet: animal inventory from the reign of Nabopolassar or Nebuchadnezzar II, Ebabbar archive, Clay, Babylonian
Babylonian
ca. late 7th–early 6th century BCE
Cuneiform tablet: account of dates as imittu-rent, Ebabbar archive, Clay, Babylonian
Babylonian
ca. 617 BCE
Cuneiform tablet: account of grain for workmen, Ebabbar archive, Clay, Babylonian
Babylonian
ca. 616 BCE
Cuneiform tablet: account of dates as imittu-rent with sissinnu payments, Ebabbar archive, Clay, Babylonian
Babylonian
ca. 626–605 BCE (?)
Cuneiform tablet: account of dates as imittu-rent with sissinnu-payments, Ebabbar archive, Clay, Babylonian
Babylonian
ca. early 6th–mid 6th century BCE
Cuneiform tablet: account of dates as imittu-rent, Ebabbar archive, Clay, Babylonian
Babylonian
ca. 625–605 BCE
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Spar, Ira, and Michael Jursa. 2014. Cuneiform Texts in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. 4: The Ebabbar Temple Archive and Other Texts from the Fourth to the First Millennium B.C. / Ira Spar and Michael Jursa. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art [u.a.].