Sumerian Proverbs in the Schøyen Collection

Sumerian Proverbs in the Schøyen Collection
Author: Bendt Alster
Publisher: Eisenbrauns
Total Pages: 184
Release: 2007
Genre: Foreign Language Study
ISBN:

"Sumerian proverbs constitute the oldest major corpus of proverbs in the world. They date, by and large, from the Old Babylonian period (c. 1900-1600 B.C.). Apart from a limited number of Egyptian proverbs, those of biblical and classical origin come closest in time and geographical proximity to the Sumerian proverbs. The Sumerian proverbs are the oldest branch of a universally known phenomenon. The number of proverbs that can be adduced for comparison from European, American, Arabic, Chinese, Indian, and African sources, to mention only the main areas, is overwhelming"--Prové de l'editor.

Sumerian Literary Texts in the Schøyen Collection

Sumerian Literary Texts in the Schøyen Collection
Author: Christopher Metcalf
Publisher: Penn State Press
Total Pages: 169
Release: 2019-08-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 1646020111

The first in a series of volumes publishing the Sumerian literary texts in the Schøyen Collection, this book makes available, for the first time, editions of seventeen cuneiform tablets, dating to ca. 2000 BCE and containing works of Sumerian religious poetry. Edited, translated, and annotated by Christopher Metcalf, these poems shed light on the interaction between cult, scholarship, and scribal culture in Mesopotamia in the early second millennium BCE. The present volume contains fourteen songs composed in praise of the various gods of the Mesopotamian pantheon; it is believed that these songs were typically performed in temple cults. Among them are a song in praise of Sud, goddess of the ancient Mesopotamian city Shuruppak; a song describing the statue of the protective goddess Lamma-saga in the “Sacred City” temple complex at Girsu; and a previously unknown hymn dedicated to the creator god Enki. Each text is provided in transliteration and translation and accompanied by hand-copies and images of the tablets themselves. Expertly contextualizing each song in Babylonian religious and literary history, this thoroughly competent editio princeps will prove a valuable tool for scholars interested in the literary and religious traditions of ancient Mesopotamia.

Ur III Texts in the Schøyen Collection

Ur III Texts in the Schøyen Collection
Author: Jacob L. Dahl
Publisher: Penn State Press
Total Pages: 429
Release: 2020-12-11
Genre: History
ISBN: 1646020774

Judging from the sheer amount of textual material left to us, the rulers of ancient Ur were above all else concerned with keeping track of their poorest subjects, who made up the majority of the population under their jurisdiction. Year after year, administrators recorded, in frightening detail, the whereabouts of the poorest individuals in monthly and yearly rosters, assigning tiny parcels of land to countless prebend holders and starvation rations to even more numerous estate slaves. The texts published in this volume—dating from the time of the Third Dynasty of Ur (ca. 2100–2000 BC)—attest to the immense investment of the ancient rulers in managing their subjects. This volume presents editions of two hundred and twenty-four cuneiform tablets selected from the Schøyen Collection, the vast majority of which have not been previously published. The ancient provenience for these texts is primarily Umma, with other core provinces represented in smaller numbers, such as notable contributions from ancient Adab, which is underrepresented in the published record. In order to provide a fuller picture of the administration of the Ur III state, a number of texts from other collections, both published and unpublished, have been integrated into this volume. Accompanied by Jacob L. Dahl’s precise translations, extensive commentary, and exhaustive indexes, this volume presents extensive new data on prosopography, economy, accounting procedures, letters, contracts, technical terminology, and agriculture that adds significantly to our knowledge of society and the economy during the Third Dynasty of Ur. An important contribution to the study of the Ur III period, in particular for Assyriology, this volume will serve as a useful handbook for scholars and students alike.

Old Babylonian Texts in the Schøyen Collection, Part Two

Old Babylonian Texts in the Schøyen Collection, Part Two
Author: A. R. George
Publisher: Penn State Press
Total Pages: 249
Release: 2019-08-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 1646020146

In ancient Mesopotamia, men training to be scribes copied model letters in order to practice writing and familiarize themselves with epistolary forms and expressions. Similarly, model contracts were used to teach them how to draw up agreements for the transactions typical of everyday economic life. This volume makes available a trove of previously unknown tablets and fragments, now housed in the Shøyen Collection, that were produced in the training of scribes in Old Babylonian schools. Following on Old Babylonian Texts in the Schøyen Collection, Part One: Selected Letters, this volume publishes the contents of sixty-five tablets bearing Akkadian letters used to train scribes and twenty-six prisms and tablets carrying Sumerian legal texts copied in the same context. Each text is presented in transliterated form and in translation, with appropriate commentary and annotations and, at the end of the book, photographs of the cuneiform. The material is made easily navigable by a catalogue, bibliography, and indexes. This collection of previously unknown documents expands the extant corpus of educational texts, making an essential contribution to the study of the ancient world.

A Remarkable Collection of Babylonian Mathematical Texts

A Remarkable Collection of Babylonian Mathematical Texts
Author: Jöran Friberg
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 544
Release: 2007-10-01
Genre: Mathematics
ISBN: 0387489770

The book analyzes the mathematical tablets from the private collection of Martin Schoyen. It includes analyses of tablets which have never been studied before. This provides new insight into Babylonian understanding of sophisticated mathematical objects. The book is carefully written and organized. The tablets are classified according to mathematical content and purpose, while drawings and pictures are provided for the most interesting tablets.

Marbeh Ḥokmah

Marbeh Ḥokmah
Author: Shamir Yonah
Publisher: Penn State Press
Total Pages: 1052
Release: 2015-12-10
Genre: History
ISBN: 1575063611

The title, Marbeh Ḥokmah, meaning “increases wisdom,” reflects the fact that Victor Avigdor Hurowitz was a scholar who increased wisdom and who continues to increase the wisdom of scholars throughout the world even after his untimely death at the age of 64. The book was edited by five of Professor Hurowitz’s colleagues: Profs. Shamir Yona and Mayer I. Gruber of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Edward L. Greenstein of Bar-Ilan University, Peter Machinist of Harvard University, and Shalom M. Paul of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. The two-volume collection contains 49 groundbreaking essays written by 53 distinguished authors from various institutions of higher learning in Israel and around the world. The authors include Victor’s teachers, colleagues, and students, and the essays deal with a great variety of subjects. The breadth of subject matter featured in Marbeh Ḥokmah is a most appropriate tribute to Victor Avigdor Hurowitz, whose published scholarship encompassed a wide variety of fields of interest pertaining to the study of the Hebrew Bible and the ancient Near East: Wisdom Literature, Psalmody, prophecy and prophets, the priesthood, eschatology, historiography, ancient inscriptions, medieval Hebrew biblical exegesis, religious rites, building and architecture, temples, the art of warfare, Semitic philology, Sumerian proverbs, epigraphy, rhetoric and stylistics, poetry, lamentations, the interconnections between Hebrew Scripture and the ancient Near East, the cultures of ancient Egypt and ancient Mesopotamia, innerbiblical parallels, and many other subjects.

Judges 1

Judges 1
Author: Mark S. Smith
Publisher: Fortress Press
Total Pages: 924
Release: 2021-11-23
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1506480497

This groundbreaking volume presents a new translation of the text and detailed interpretation of almost every word or phrase in the book of Judges, drawing from archaeology and iconography, textual versions, biblical parallels, and extrabiblical texts, many never noted before. Archaeology also serves to show how a story of the Iron II period employed visible ruins to narrate supposedly early events from the so-called "period of the Judges." The synchronic analysis for each unit sketches its characters and main themes, as well as other literary dynamics. The diachronic, redactional analysis shows the shifting settings of units as well as their development, commonly due to their inner-textual reception and reinterpretation. The result is a remarkably fresh historical-critical treatment of 1:1-10:5.

Women in the Ancient Near East

Women in the Ancient Near East
Author: Mark Chavalas
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 334
Release: 2013-10-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 1135008256

Women in the Ancient Near East provides a collection of primary sources that further our understanding of women from Mesopotamian and Near Eastern civilizations, from the earliest historical and literary texts in the third millennium BC to the end of Mesopotamian political autonomy in the sixth century BC. This book is a valuable resource for historians of the Near East and for those studying women in the ancient world. It moves beyond simply identifying women in the Near East to attempting to place them in historical and literary context, following the latest research. A number of literary genres are represented, including myths and epics, proverbs, medical texts, law collections, letters, treaties, as well as building, dedicatory, and funerary inscriptions.

Education in Early 2nd Millennium BC Babylonia

Education in Early 2nd Millennium BC Babylonia
Author: Alexandra Kleinerman
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 393
Release: 2011-08-25
Genre: Education
ISBN: 9004212426

This book examines a collection of twenty-two literary letters and related compositions, the Sumerian Epistolary Miscellany, studied as part of the Old Babylonian Sumerian scribal curriculum, in an attempt to better understand the nature of the curriculum as a whole.

Of Courtiers and Kings

Of Courtiers and Kings
Author: Tawny L. Holm
Publisher: Penn State Press
Total Pages: 593
Release: 2013-11-07
Genre: History
ISBN: 1575068699

Holm’s book is an innovative approach to the biblical Book of Daniel. It places Daniel against the background of story-collections, an ancient genre that began in Egypt in the mid-second millennium B.C.E. This work focuses on Daniel 6–4 and provides detailed comparisons with specific bodies of story-collections and other related material from the Ancient Near East. In this regard, special attention is given to Egyptian court tales, a large corpus mostly neglected by previous biblical scholars. Thus, this book brings new evidence and fresh insights to the field of Daniel studies, which in recent years has generated constant interest, especially as it pertains to textual issues and literary matters. Setting Daniel against an explicit definition of the story-collection genre redefines a vast array of questions concerning textual criticism, compositional history, and the overall nature of the book. For instance, the divergent texts of the narrative parts of Daniel (the Masoretic text and the Greek editions in Theodotion and the Septuagint) now need to be described in part as variant editions, or tellings, of a common core material, rather than as translations of older written texts with clearly traceable genealogies. When Daniel is studied in the context of story-collections and kindred compositions from the Ancient Near Eastern and neighboring literatures, new light is shed on the literary traditions and processes from which the Daniel stories arose. There are a greater number of court tales and cycles than previously recognized, as in the case of Qumran but also the Egypt Demotic corpus. The detailed discussion of all these materials allows us to appreciate the Book of Daniel in a much wider literary milieu and it furthers our understanding of the history of its composition and early transmission.