old babylonian letters from tell asmar

222 Pages·2007·12.43 MB·English

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ASSYRIOLOGICAL STUDIES . No. 22
THE ORIENTAL INSTITUTE OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO
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OLD BABYLONIAN LETTERS
FROM TELL ASMAR
ROBERT M. WHITING, JR.
THE ORIENTAL INSTITUTE OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO
ASSYRIOLOGICAL STUDIES . No. 22
CHICAGO . ILLINOIS
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Library of Congress Catalog Number: 86-61412
ISBN: 0-918986-47-8
ISSN: 0066-9903
The Oriental Institute, Chicago
© 1987 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved
Published 1987. Printed in the United States of America.
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This work is dedicated to the memory of
my father
Robert M. Whiting
(1906-1969)
and my teacher and friend
Ignace J. Gelb
(1907-1985)
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CONTENTS
LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES .......... .... ........... .......... .viii
PREFACE .................. ............................. ....... ix
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ................... . ........................ . xi
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL ABBREVIATIONS ...... .. ................... ... xiii
INTRODUCTION
Part I: Archaeological and Philological . ....... . ........... . . . .. . 1
1. Excavations at Tell Asmar and Inscriptional Material Found ..... ...... .. .. 1
2. Work on Inscriptional Material Found at Tell Asmar .......... ... ... ... 1
3. The Letters Found at Tell Asmar ......... ..... ........ ........ 2
4. Dating the Letters .......... ...... . ........... ........ .. 3
5. Formulary and Style .............. ... ... .................... . . 4
6. Writing ......... ...... ................. ... .... ...... 5
7. Language ........ . ... .... ....... ........ . .. ... ..... 8
Pronouns ........... ..... ...... ....... ........ ......... 9
Nouns ........ ............ ......... ........... ..... 11
Verbs . ..... .... ............................. .... ...... 11
Particles ..... .... .. . . ............... ...... .. . ........ . .. 13
Lexicon ....... .......... ..................... ........ 14
Syntax . ................... ................... ........ . 14
The Use and Extinction of the Dual ......... ..... ... ....... .. . 15
8. Position of the Language of the Tell Asmar Letters in the
Historical Grammar of Akkadian ..... ............ ...... . . .. 16
Part II: Historical ................ .. ..... .............. ........ 23
1. Historical Background of the Earlier Letters from Tell Asmar ..o.. ..... .. . 23
2. Historical Connotations of the Letters from Tell Asmar .. . .. ... .. .... . .. 29
CATALOG OF THE LETTERS ........ ............................... 34
TRANSLITERATIONS, TRANSLATIONS, AND COMMENTARY ................ 37
EXCURSUS A: limdum "(made) known," "known (about)" . . . . .............. . . 111
EXCURSUS B: sail//T/bultum "gift, shipment, consignment" . . . . . ... .......... . 113
SUPPLEMENT ..... ......................... . ........ . ..... ..... . 119
INDEXES AND GLOSSARY
Index of Proper Names
1. Personal Names ................... .. .......... . . 121
2. Geographic Names ................... .......... .. ......... 122
3. Divine Names ................... .................. ... 122
Syllabary ................................ . ................. . 123
Index of Logograms .. ... ................ .. ........ ... ......... 127
Introduction to Glossary . . . . . . ... . .................. .......... .. . 129
Glossary ..... .... .................................. ...... . 131
Unparsed Forms ......... ... ................ ............. . 177
PLATES ..... .................. . ................................ 179
vii
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LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES
Figure 1. Relationship Between the Families of Bilalama and Usasum ................ 28
Table 1. Comparison of Archaic Old Babylonian with Other Dialects ............... 20
Table 2. Rulers of Eshnunna During the Period Covered by the Letters .............. 22
Table 3. Chronology .......... ....... ................... ......... 32
viii
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PREFACE
It is now over half a century since the last season of excavations at Tell Asmar came to an end,
and as yet no comprehensive treatment of the Ur III and Old Babylonian tablets found there has been
presented. The present work is a first step in the systematic publication of these tablets and consists of
all the letters written in Akkadian found at that site.
It has long been recognized that the letters found at Tell Asmar are important from both a
historical and linguistic point of view. They are documents from a dark age of Mesopotamian history
when historical sources consist mostly of repetitive royal inscriptions written in Sumerian and only a
scant handful of documents written in Akkadian are known. The letters from Tell Asmar cover a
period of a little more than a century, from shortly before 2000 B.c. (end of the Third Dynasty of Ur)
to shortly after 1900 B.C. (time of Sumu-abum and Sumu-la-El of Babylon), and for the first time offer
linguistic continuity for this period. The significance of this fact for the historical grammar of
Akkadian and especially for the earliest stage of Old Babylonian and its relationship to Old Akkadian
cannot be overstated.
If these letters are important, their importance is matched by the difficulties which they present. In
addition to the general lack of context inherent in letters, most of the letters are broken or fragmentary
further reducing the context, and the uniqueness of these texts means that there are no parallel,
contemporary documents to aid in interpreting them. Finally, the small size and diversity of the letter
collection means that only the most common words or phrases, which are already well understood,
occur often enough to enable us to ensure their correct interpretation.
The format of the present edition has, to a large extent, been dictated by the limitations imposed
by these difficulties. In this edition, I have presented the letters in an order which, based on internal and
external evidence, is roughly chronological. Each letter is given in transliteration and accompanied by a
translation when feasible. However, many of the more fragmentary letters have been left without
translations since there seemed little point in providing translations of well-attested words connected
with dots and brackets and punctuated with question marks. On the other hand, I have provided a
much more comprehensive Glossary than would normally accompany a collection of letters. The
Glossary is in fact a concordance of the letters which gives each identifiable word in its complete
context, fully parsed, and with a full translation when possible. The format of the Glossary, especially
the fact that each form is fully parsed, compensates for the general lack of a detailed philological
commentary for each individual letter. Since the occurrences of each word are collected in the Glossary
and the major points of grammar are discussed in the philological section of the introduction and the
significant historical problems are treated in the historical section, philological commentary has
generally been dispensed with as redundant and used only when a specific point needed to be
established which would have unduly distracted the reader if presented in the philological or historical
section. Thus, the Glossary and other indexes and the Introduction form an integral part of the
treatment of the texts and cannot by dispensed with in evaluating the information they contain.
The letters from Tell Asmar can be divided into an earlier group ýgenerally from the time of
Bilalama and earlier) and a later group (generally from the time of Ipiq-Adad I and later) as well as a
group of transitional letters (from the time of Ur-Ninmar or Ur-NingiSzida). The terms "earlier letters"
and "later letters" are used repeatedly to refer to the first two groups. Some confusion may arise from
the fact that the terms early Old Babylonian (time of Sumu-abum and Sumu-la-El) and later Old
Babylonian (Hammurapi and post-Hammurapi) are used in discussing the language. The reader must
keep in mind that the later letters from Tell Asmar (time of Ipiq-Adad I) correspond to the stage of
ix
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LETTERS FROM TELL ASMAR
language widely known as early Old Babylonian (time of Sumu-abum and Sumu-la-El). Although the
term archaic Old Babylonian is eventually introduced for the early letters (time of Bilalama), it was
thought wise not to use this term in the discussion until the language of these letters had been defined
and the term could be fully justified. The reader must be careful to distinguish the terms early letters
(= archaic Old Babylonian; time of Bilalama) from the term early Old Babylonian (time of Sumu-
abum and Sumu-la-El). The dividing points of the letters from Tell Asmar into groups are marked with
heavy lines in the catalog of the letters, but the reader would do well to keep the following numbers in
mind while using the Introduction and Glossary:
1-30: Early letters (= archaic Old Babylonian; time of Bilalama)
31-38: Transitional letters (time of Ur-Ninmar and Ur-Ningisida)
39-54: Later letters (= early Old Babylonian; time of Ipiq-Adad I, Sumu-abum, and
Sumu-la-El)
55: Very late letter (= later Old Babylonian; time of Hammurapi or later)
The most significant result of the present work for the historical grammar of Akkadian is the
definition of the earliest stage of Old Babylonian, which is temporally contiguous to Ur III Akkadian.
The comparatively small number of thirty letters and fragments written in archaic Old Babylonian is
wholly inadequate for the preparation of a comprehensive grammar of this stage of the language but is
quite adequate for defining the main features of the grammar and for establishing which branch of
Akkadian it belongs to (see section 8 of the Introduction).
From a historical standpoint, the discussion has generally been limited to the contributions which
the letters from Tell Asmar make to the understanding of the history of the period which they cover.
However, it has been necessary, especially in connection with the period of Bilalama, to go beyond the
letters to provide a historical context in which the early letters can be understood.
Unfortunately, the historical conclusions contributed by the letters must, for the most part, be
regarded as tentative. There is a wealth of historical information still awaiting study in the administra-
tive and legal texts from Tell Asmar (see section 2 of the Introduction). These tablets should be given
their due consideration and it would be premature to represent the contributions of the letters as
providing a complete, or even entirely accurate, historical picture without considering them in the light
of the information from the legal and administrative texts.
Although much of this information has been provided by Jacobsen in OIP 43, pp. 116-200, my
preliminary work on these tablets has resulted in the correction of several date formulas as well as the
discovery of several additional date formulas and the assignment (or reassignment) of a number of year
dates to specific rulers. In addition, the extensive prosopographic information offered by these texts has
barely been touched.
For all these reasons, many of the complex historical problems which the texts from Tell Asmar
may help to illuminate, including the extremely difficult question of the position of the Amorites in the
social, economic, and political structure of the early Isin-Larsa period, which these letters touch upon,
will have to await a thorough study of the economic and administrative texts before their solution can
be attempted.