Texts and Contexts: The Circulation and Transmission of Cuneiform Texts in Social Space

321 Pages·2015·23.217 MB·English

by  Paul Delnero, Jacob Lauinger

TextsandContexts
Studies in Ancient
Near Eastern Records
General Editor:
Gonzalo Rubio
Editors:
Nicole Brisch, Petra Goedegebuure, Markus Hilgert,
Amélie Kuhrt, Peter Machinist, Piotr Michalowski,
Cécile Michel, Beate Pongratz-Leisten, D. T. Potts,
Kim Ryholt
Volume 9
Texts and
Contexts
The Circulation and Transmission of Cuneiform Texts
in Social Space
Edited by
Paul Delnero and Jacob Lauinger
DE GRUYTER
ISBN978-1-61451-717-7
e-ISBN(PDF)978-1-61451-537-1
e-ISBN(EPUB)978-1-61451-963-8
ISSN2161-4415
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BibliographicinformationpublishedbytheDeutscheNationalbibliothek
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Contents
PaulDelneroandJacobLauinger
1 Introduction
ReassemblingtheSocialfromTextsandContexts 1
Textual Circulation and Performance
DanielE.Fleming
2 Emar’sentuInstallation
RevisingRitualandTextTogether 29
GojkoBarjamovic
3 ContextualizingTradition
Magic,LiteracyandDomesticLifeinOldAssyrianKanesh 48
PaulDelnero
4 TextsandPerformance
TheMaterialityandFunctionoftheSumerianLiturgicalCorpus 87
Textual Circulation and Administrative Praxis
ChristopherWoods
5 ContingencyTablesandEconomicForecastingintheEarliestTextsfrom
Mesopotamia 121
StevenJ.Garfinkle
6 UrIIIAdministrativeTexts
BuildingBlocksofStateCommunity 143
MichaelKozuh
7 Policing,Planning,andProvisos
TheFunctionofLegalTextsintheManagementoftheEannaTemple’s
LivestockintheFirstMillenniumBC 166
vi Contents
Textual Circulation and the Mechanics of Production
SaraJ.Milstein
8 The“Magic”ofAdapa 191
MatthewT.Rutz
9 TheTextaftertheSacrifice
DivinationReportsfromKassiteBabylonia 214
ChristianW.Hess
10 SongsofClay
MaterialityandPoeticsinEarlyAkkadianEpic 251
JacobLauinger
11 Neo-AssyrianScribes,“Esarhaddon’sSuccessionTreaty,”andthe
DynamicsofTextualMassProduction 285
Paul Delnero and Jacob Lauinger
1 Introduction
Reassembling the Social from Texts and Contexts
For those who read and study cuneiform texts as sources for reconstructing
andunderstandingthehistoryandcultureofancientMesopotamia,thetextual
record from this time and place frequently presents itself as a self-contained
body of evidence, which, if examined and understood in its entirety, would
reveal the answers to any questions that are asked of it within the limits of
whatisrecordedinthesurvivingtexts.Althoughcuneiformtextsarerecorded
on physical media such as clay tablets and stone monuments, scholars and
otherinterestedreadersalmostalwaysinteractwiththeircontentthroughpho-
tographsordrawingsoftheoriginalsources,orevenmoreindirectly,through
transliterationsandtranslationsproducedbyotherswhohavestudiedthetexts
before them. In all of these instances, the different means employed to repro-
ducethesourcessharetheintentionofmakingtheircontentavailableforfur-
ther study as accurately and accessibly as possible. Since most reproductions
ofcuneiformssourcesareintendedforscholarsinterestedprimarily,ifnotex-
clusively,intheircontent,anditisnotpossibletoreplicateallofthefeatures
of a three-dimensional object in a two-dimensional space, let alone in tran-
scription, the emphasis on reproducing the content of these sources is to a
certain extent inevitable and unavoidable. But one of the unintended conse-
quences of emphasizing content over the other aspects of the sources is that
the content is presented as an abstraction that exists apart from the medium
onwhichitappears.Theexposuretothecontentofcuneiformsourcesasdis-
embodied abstractions is so deeply embedded in the experience of studying
Mesopotamian texts that even when working directly with an actual tablet or
monument, it is very difficult not to ignore everything else about the object
itselfandtofocusinsteadsolelyontranscribingandinterpretingitscontent.
While Assyriologists have long been aware of the importance of context
forinterpreting cuneiformtexts,and itwouldbe difficulttofind astudyfrom
the past thirty or forty years that does not address, in some form or another,
thearchaeological,ifnotalsothehistorical,cultural,orpoliticalcontextofthe
textual sources that are treated, the extent to which the content of a text is
examined in isolation from its function as a material object has a subtle, but
fundamental influence on the way the relationship between texts and their
contexts is conceptualized. One of the most substantial effects of separating
textsfromtheirphysicalinstantiationsisthatitdetachesthecontentofatext
2 PaulDelneroandJacobLauinger
fromitsimmediatespatialandtemporalanchoringsothatitbecomesastatic,
unchanging abstraction, which can be studied as a fixed and self-contained
system of meaning, removed from the dynamics of the social world in which
itwasproducedandcirculated.Sincefreezinglanguagesothatitisnolonger
boundbytimeandspaceisoneoftheprimaryattributesofwritingasatech-
nology,examiningtheverbalcontentofatextwithouttakingintoaccountthe
multiplicity of meanings it might have had in the social context in which it
wasoriginallyrecorded,uttered,orconceivedisjustifiable,particularlywhen
the text was intended to be read by readers in different times and places. But
veryfew,ifanyMesopotamiantextsarelikelytohavebeenproducedwiththe
intentionoftranscendingthecircumscribedlocalandinstitutionalcontextsin
which they were compiled. Moreover, with the exception of monumental and
votiveinscriptionsaddressedtodeitiesorfuturerulers,itisunlikelythatmany
cuneiformtextswereeverintendedtooutlivethefinitepurposeforwhichthey
werewritten.However,whentextsareboundtospecificspatialandtemporal
contexts,therelationshipbetweenthecontentofatextanditsaudienceisless
stable than it would be for texts that were composed for an ideal audience of
present and future readers who could be hoped to understand their meaning
at any place or time. When understood as material objects with limited, but
clearly defined spatial and temporal trajectories, the meaning of texts can be
expectedtochangeastheymovethroughsocialspaceandthesignificanceof
theircontentisconditionedandtransformedbythehandsthroughwhichthey
pass and the different recipients who view and use them. In studying texts
independently from their materiality and their movement through space and
time, and examining their content instead as a fixed abstraction, a critical di-
mensionoftheirmeaningandtheircontextislost.
The papers in this volume were first presented in their initial form at a
one-day symposium organized by the editors at Johns Hopkins University on
November19,2013.Thegoalofthesymposium,andthearticlesinthisvolume
which resulted from it, was to bring together specialists working on texts or
textual corpora from different periods, genres, and areas of the cuneiform
worldtoconsidertherelationshipbetweenMesopotamiantextsandtheircon-
textsspecificallywithrespecttohowdifferenttypesofcuneiformtextsmoved
and functioned as objects in social space. The purpose of asking the partici-
pants to address the question of text and context from this perspective was
two-fold:
1. Toprovide abroadarray oftext- orcorpora-specificstudies thatillustrate
arangeofsocial,cultural,and/orhistoricalcontextsinwhichtextsofspe-
cific types circulated and to show how these contexts may have condi-
tionedandtransformedthemeaningofthetextsexaminedastheymoved
throughspaceandtime.
Introduction 3
2. To present different methodologies and sources of evidence that can be
usedtoreconstructthecontextsinwhichthetextsinquestioncirculated,
in order to provide a critical framework for determining how these texts
functioned.
Inkeepingwiththesetwogoals,allofthepaperspresentedatthesymposium,
andthearticlesthatdevelopedoutofthemforthisvolume,addressthemove-
mentandfunctionoftextsinsocialspacewithrespecttotextsofmanydiffer-
enttypesandfromawiderangeofmethodologicalperspectives.Thetextsand
periodscoveredbythesestudiescompriselate-secondmillenniumritualtexts
from Emar (Daniel Fleming), Old Assyrian incantations from Kanesh (Gojko
Barjamovic), early second millennium Sumerian laments (Paul Delnero), late-
fourth millennium administrative texts from Uruk (Christopher Woods), Ur III
administrativetextsfromsouthernMesopotamia(StevenGarfinkle),Neo-Baby-
lonianadministrativetextsfromUruk(MichaelKozuh),OldBabylonianSume-
rianliterarycompositionsfromMeturan(SaraMilstein),MiddleBabyloniandi-
vinatoryreportsfromNippur(MatthewRutz),Akkadianepicsfromthesecond
and first millennia (Christian Hess), and Neo-Assyrian treaties from the core
and periphery of the Neo-Assyrian empire (Jacob Lauinger). Although the
methodologies applied to this broad array of texts and textual corpora are di-
verseandmulti-faceted,eachstudyemphasizesoneofthreemoregeneralap-
proachestothedynamicrelationshipbetweentextsandcontextswithrespect
totheirfunctionasmaterialobjectsthatmovethroughsocialspace:
1. Textualcirculationandperformance(Fleming,Barjamovic,andDelnero)
2. Textualcirculationandadministrativepraxis(Woods,Garfinkle,andKozuh)
3. Textualcirculationandthemechanicsofproduction(Milstein,Rutz,Hess,
andLauinger)
NumerousscholarshavetreatedthetopicofMesopotamiantextsandcontexts
from a wide range of perspectives, resulting in studies that have yielded an
abundanceofvaluableinsightsintothehistorical,cultural,andsocialcontexts
in which cuneiform texts circulated. Many of these studies have focused on
illuminatingoneobscuresideoftherelationshipbetweenthecontentoftexts
and their contexts by focusing on the other. That is, context creates a frame-
work for (re)approaching a text’s content, or content provides the means for
(re)constructingatext’scontext(historical,cultural,social,orotherwise).Still
other studies self-consciously place content and context in a dialectical rela-
tionship. In the following section, we briefly summarize selected examples of
thesethreemethodologies–contenttocontext,contentfromcontext,content
andcontext–toillustratehow,explicitlyorimplicitly,thecontributionstothis