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The Sultantepe Tablets: A Preliminary Note

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 December 2013

O. R. Gurney
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Extract

The unbaked clay tablets found by Mr. Seton Lloyd and Bay Nuri Gökçe at Sultantepe were transported to the Archaeological Museum at Ankara in June, 1951. By a happy coincidence I arrived in Ankara shortly afterwards and was able to spend a period of about five weeks in examining the collection. At the beginning of my stay in Ankara the tablets were drying out well, and it was possible to brush off the accumulations of earth from many of them without damage. Others, however, resisted this superficial treatment and will have to be baked before an epigraphist can begin to work on them.

The questions which were uppermost in our minds at Ankara were the ancient name of the site, the date of the finds, and the general nature of the hoard of tablets found in a large pile in sounding F, since this in its turn would throw light on the nature of the building that contained them. It was obvious to me at first sight that these tablets closely resembled in script and appearance those from the library of Assurbanipal at Nineveh and that the majority of them contained religious or lexicographical texts. But since they were unbaked, it did not seem very probable that they had formed part of a royal library. My first attention was therefore directed towards the colophons, or scribal notes to be found at the end of many of the texts, since these were likely to contain the most direct clue to the nature and purpose of the collection and might also mention the date and place of writing.

Type
Research Article
Information
Anatolian Studies , Volume 2 , December 1952 , pp. 25 - 35
Copyright
Copyright © The British Institute at Ankara 1952

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References

page 25 note 1 Already known from the business document Vorderasiatische Schriftdenkmäler, I, no. 100.

page 25 note 2 This will be the limmu-name which is mutilated on K.437, see Bezold, Catalogue.

page 26 note 1 The name of the city Harran occurs in a broken line on no. 36 in the section containing the names of witnesses, but no conclusion can be drawn from this.

page 26 note 2 See already The Times, 22nd August, 1951.

page 26 note 3 Var. MAŠ.DÀ.

page 26 note 4 So also rev. 8, where the Nineveh text has correctly ak-kan-nu.

page 28 note 1 imḫaṣa must be a substantive here, perhaps formed from maḫāṣu with prosthetic ‘aleph, as ikribu from karābu etc. No wind IM.ḪA.ZA is known to me, nor would such a reading suit the context.

page 28 note 2 muttenqu presumably partic. I2 from eméqu.

page 28 note 3 Hitherto read IM.DIRIG from K. 10008, 15, but this line may be taken from a different part of the poem.

page 28 note 4 Cf. II 45, III 49, VI 107, and Labat's note on the last passage.

page 29 note 1 See Kunstmann, W., Die Babylonische Gebetsbeschwörung (Leipziger Semitische Studien, Neue Folge Band II, 1932), pp. 83 ff.Google Scholar

page 32 note 1 An English translation of the Myth of Zû may be found in Ancient Near Eastern Texts, by Pritchard, J. B. (Princeton, 1950), pp. 111–3Google Scholar. A new text from Assur is published by Ebeling, E. in Revue d'Assyriologie, XLVI, pp. 25–41Google Scholar, and a revised edition of the Susa version by J. Nougayrol, ibid., pp. 87-97.

page 32 note 2 pul-ha-tum is clear. For the following word our tablet has ḫa-X-X-ṧi-na, possibly ḫa-mu-u-ṧi-na.

page 32 note 3 The lower part of a sign which might be SU or MA is visible here. The verb umallâ suggests qâtuṧṧu, i.e., ŠU(II)-uš-šu, though this word is usually spelt out qa-tuṧ-ṧu.

page 32 note 4 Our tablet has ú-ma-al-la-a. KAR. 314, 23 appears to have ú-ma-la-a, but the sign ma is damaged and it does not seem impossible that Dr. Ebeling has misread a mal here. The kal on the Kish tablet (which I have collated) must be a scribal error for mal.

page 32 note 5 The traces of this line on our tablet are not entirely reconcilable with those on the Kish tablet, me-ḫa-a is clear, but the sign iš immediately precedes me, and the signs at the beginning of the line are damaged (possibly ib-bi [ša]-ma-iš).

page 33 note 1 Of this line only ilāni i-[…] remains on the Sultantepe tablet. The text of the Kish and Assur tablets seems to be corrupt.

page 33 note 2 Hardly liṧ-riṧ-šá, though the Kish tablet has clearly liṧ-RI-[… ]. liš-šaq-ša would be IV1 from ṧaqdāṧu, but this yields no intelligible sense.