Abstract
One of the main repositories of Mesopotamian text commentaries are the libraries of the city of Uruk, which have yielded approximately ninety tablets and fragments that contain texts of this genre. While some of the Uruk commentaries seem to have been composed locally, others reflect traditions that were imported to Uruk from other cities. This article studies cultural imports in Uruk commentaries, especially those that originated in the city of Nippur . It will place particular emphasis on the case of the Gimil-Sîn family, a family of scholars from Nippur . Most of the tablets belonging to this family stem from Uruk, but they have hitherto escaped attention due to the cryptographic fashion in which their colophons are written.
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Notes
- 1.
Excluding those mukallimtu commentaries and ṣâtu commentaries that underwent a process of standardization at a relatively early period, such as the ‘Izbu principal commentary ’. See Sect. 2.2.
- 2.
- 3.
Kessler (2004) deals with Uruk, but ibid.: 251 it is stated that a similar phenomenon may have happened at Ur.
- 4.
Jursa (2013: 158).
- 5.
As noted by Jursa (2013: 157), an extreme example of this is the association of a prebend holder from Sippar with a family holding the same prebend in Uruk through marriage during the reign of Darius I (i.e., before 484 BCE). Nevertheless, as noted by Jursa, the immediate association of the priests was still with their own cities and surroundings.
- 6.
Gabbay (2014: 209–214).
- 7.
- 8.
For the local religious traditions in the Late Babylonian period, see also Oelsner (1994).
- 9.
For the case of Uruk, see Kessler (2004).
- 10.
- 11.
Gabbay (2014: 215–227).
- 12.
As noted by Jursa (2013: 157), already in the Neo-Babylonian period there were center and satellite connections between various neighboring cities and shrines, such as Sippar and Akkad or Uruk and Larsa. It is likely that local connections between neighboring cities continued into the Late Babylonian period.
- 13.
The Babylon -Borsippa local tradition is of course the strongest, but this local tradition is also part of a wider north Babylonian tradition. The Babylon -Borsippa close scholarly tradition is seen most explicitly in colophons that emphasize that the knowledge in the tablet must be limited only to the scholars of Babylon and Borsippa (Frahm 2012: 19 with fn. 17; Lenzi 2008: 164). Nevertheless, Babylon and Borsippa also had distinct cultic traditions, at least according to a passage from a Seleucid astronomical diary (106 BCE) that may mention a lethal fight between priests of Babylon and priests of Borsippa regarding an offering in Esaĝil, see Jursa (2013: 157) in reference to Sachs and Hunger (1996: 380 No. 105 B 14′–15′).
- 14.
- 15.
Note, however, that copies of commentaries were also produced: see Sect. 2.2.
- 16.
See, e.g., fn. 22.
- 17.
- 18.
George (1991: 150–151) l. 33. a = AO 17661 (TBÉR 56–57 = CCP 4.1.1.A.b); b = SpTU 1, 27 (CCP 4.1.1.B); c = SpTU 1, 28 (CCP 4.1.1.C); d = SpTU 5, 256 (CCP 4.1.1.A.a). Henceforth CCP = Cuneiform Commentaries Project (https://ccp.yale.edu, accessed 7/9/2018). The record for each tablet can be accessed using the CCP numbers given above as the URL path to the Cuneiform Commentaries Project, e.g., http://ccp.yale.edu/4.1.1.A.a for CCP 4.1.1.A.a.
- 19.
Civil (1974) = CCP 4.2.A.a; UET 6/3, 897 = CCP 4.2.A.b.
- 20.
The second part (“the questioning of a scholar”) is probably in apposition to the first, although a construct chain cannot be excluded. All the texts listed in Frahm (2011: 53–54) are from Babylon or Borsippa (except for AO 3555 of unknown provenance, but perhaps from northern Babylonia as well). Note šūt pî maš’alti ummâni in Kutha (Biggs 1968: 54 l.19). No commentary from Sippar preserves this subscript. This may be due to the date of the Sippar commentaries, usually earlier than those from Babylon and Borsippa .
- 21.
- 22.
Another distinction between northern Babylonia and southern-central Babylonia may also be seen in the frequency of the use of technical terminology. There seems to be less use of exegetical terminology in north Babylonian commentaries as opposed to south/central Babylonian commentaries. This may be seen, e.g., with the verb qabû. A citation from the base text may be introduced in commentaries by the Akkadian term ša iqbû, ‘which it said’, and a citation from a different text in support of an interpretation may be introduced by the terms ina … qabi, ‘it is said in …’, or ša ina … iqbû, ‘which it said in…’ (and similar phrases; see Gabbay 2016: 201–231). The impression is that commentaries from Uruk and Nippur make much more use of these terms than the commentaries from Babylon and Borsippa . Other terms are also used less frequently in northern Babylonia . For example, SpTU 1, 83 r 12 (CCP 3.7.2.C; Böck 2000: 256 l. 48) from Uruk contains an almost identical commentarial entry as BM 41623 r 10′ (CCP 3.7.2.K) from Babylon , except for the omission of the technical term aššu in the latter (Gabbay 2016: 144–165). This impression, though, may change with the publication of more commentaries from the Babylon Collection of the British Museum. In addition, the phenomenon may also be connected with the date of the tablets: whereas the Uruk tablets are mostly from the late Achaemenid period, many of the Babylon tablets date to the Seleucid and Parthian periods. See Gabbay (2016: 265–274).
- 23.
This is in keeping with the manuscripts of these compositions themselves (i.e., not their commentaries). E.g., Enūma eliš is known from tablets stemming mainly from Assyria (reflecting a Babylonian tradition) and northern Babylonia (Babylon , Borsippa , Sippar, Kiš) (Lambert 2013: 3–4), and the only two tablets from Uruk (Lambert 2013: 109–123) are from excavations that uncovered materials from the Neo-Babylonian or early Achaemenid period, i.e., from before 484 BCE, when Babylonian priests and scholars were still prominent in southern Babylonia (see above). Similarly, Ludlul and the Babylonian Theodicy are only known from Assyria and northern Babylonia (Babylon , Borsippa , Sippar) (Oshima 2014: 377–379, 439). Nevertheless, these Marduk -oriented compositions were still known in the Late Babylonian period in southern Mesopotamia as well, as evidenced by two citations of Ludlul in a Late Babylonian commentary from Uruk (CCP 3.6.3.A; Finkel 2006); see Frahm (2011: 102–103) (as noted by Frahm, one of these citations includes remarkable variants, perhaps even of theological nature).
- 24.
BM 54228 (CCP 1.1.A.a), BM 66606+ (CCP 1.1.A.b), BM 69594 (CCP 1.1.A.c); see Lambert (2013: 136) and Frahm and Jiménez (2015). Other commentaries on Enūma eliš stem from Nineveh (Frahm 2011: 113–116; Lambert 2013: 135–139; Frahm and Jiménez 2015) and Assur (Lambert 2013: 136), all of which probably reflect a Babylonian tradition, as suggested by the many shared lines between them and the Babylonian tablets.
- 25.
- 26.
- 27.
BM 54644 (CCP 1.5).
- 28.
BM 59739 (CCP 5.1); see Lambert (1989: 96–98).
- 29.
- 30.
Horowitz (2009).
- 31.
For a detailed assessment of the role of compilation in the genesis of commentaries, see Gabbay (2016: 13–83).
- 32.
The mere presence of a ḫepi-gloss need not, however, mean that a tablet was copied in its entirety from an earlier tablet, rather than compiled from a multiplicity of earlier sources: the ḫepi-gloss could, for instance, mark a break in one of the sources used for the compilation . This possibility is, however, more remote in those cases in which ḫepi-glosses appear in clusters; for instance, in SpTU 1, 83 (CCP 3.7.2.C), a tablet that features a ḫepi-note in every line of one section of the reverse (r 15–20). In these cases, it seems easier to assume that the manuscript was copied from a single tablet, which was damaged at that particular point.
- 33.
It is important to note, however, that the overwhelming majority of commentaries from Uruk do not reflect any of the other criteria traditionally considered indicative of ‘canonization’ (a list of criteria, see Hallo 1991: 8–10). Fully ‘canonized’ commentaries are much more common in earlier collections, most importantly in Ashurbanipal’s libraries. Some of these canonized commentaries did reach Uruk, for instance, SpTU 2, 37 (CCP 3.6.1.A.k), a manuscript of the ‘Principal Commentary on Šumma Izbu’, a commentary so standardized that it was even used in elementary education (see fn. 42). They represent, however, a minority among the Uruk commentaries.
- 34.
The colophons of both manuscripts are well preserved, but neither of them specify that they were copied from an earlier tablet, although this was evidently the case.
- 35.
This can only be proven for two commentaries from Uruk (listed above sub 2.a). Note that a few tablets from Babylon datable to the first century BCE, most of them commentaries, state that they were copied from parchment scrolls, or that a portion of a commentary is written on such scrolls (magallatu, an Aramaic loanword, see Frahm 2011: 31). Although there is no evidence for the use of parchment scrolls to copy commentaries in the Achaemenid or early Hellenistic period, it is interesting to note that the term magallatu is already attested in a few Achaemenid documents (Donbaz and Stolper 1997: 101). On the role of parchment scrolls in the transmission of Babylonian scholarly literature, see also Clancier (2011: 762–766).
- 36.
Jiménez (2016).
- 37.
- 38.
It is not impossible, however, to understand these tablets as copies of earlier tablets which already contained such glosses.
- 39.
Beaulieu (1995) (CCP 3.8.1.C). Note also AO 10319 (TBÉR pl. 34 = CCP 3.1.53), which may also stem from Uruk, and which contains another commentary on a single omen (although the commentarial part is lost).
- 40.
RA 13 137 = CCP 4.1.13.A and GCCI 2 406 = CCP 4.1.13.B.
- 41.
However, as noted by Frahm (privatim), the fact that ṣâtu is elsewhere contrasted with šūt pî suggests that the former term refers to written lore, rather than to oral explanations.
- 42.
Only two certain cases of elementary school tablets containing an extract of a commentary are known. The first is VAT 10071 (BWL pl. 73, CCP 3.1.6.A.l), a school tablet from Aššur, one of whose extracts is taken from the ‘Principal Commentary ’ on Šumma Izbu. As observed by Frahm (2011: 206), the ‘Principal Commentary ’ is cited in this tablet because it ‘could be used as a lexical list in its own right’, which became part of the ‘stream of tradition’. The second is BM 37655 (CCP 7.2.u176), a tablet whose obverse contains a few lines with glosses separated by double and triple cola and which do not seem to belong to a lexical list, and whose reverse preserves an extract of Ludlul II 25–29 (previously unidentified).
- 43.
Several commentary tables from Uruk contain a rubric that classifies their text as a malsûtu, lit. ‘reading’, a term that appears before either the name of the scribe (e.g., malsût Anu-ikṣur, ‘reading of Anu-ikṣur’), or the name of a series, usually preceded by an ordinal number (e.g., “8th reading (malsûtu) of ‘If a City Is Set On a Height’”). It has been proposed that rubrics of the first type, in which malsûtu introduces the name of the scribe , mark tablets whose scribe “is the one who composed the commentary for use in his lecture” (Geller 2010: 140). This scenario is, however, unlikely, inasmuch as tablets so marked often contain paratextual notes that attest to the existence of an original (e.g., SpTU 1, 83 = CCP 3.7.2.C, a ‘reading of Anu-ikṣur’, which contains several textual notes indicating a damaged section in its original tablet in r 15-20; or SpTU 1, 84 = CCP 3.2.u7, classified as malsût mub.iá-[…], which contains a ḫepi-gloss in o 35). This suggests that malsûtu refers to the context in which the commentary was used, rather than to the circumstances of its composition. On the use of the term malsûtu in commentaries, as well as in other texts, see Hunger (1976: 13a), Frahm (2010: 166–168, 2011: 52), and Gabbay (2012: 281–282, 2016: 13–83, esp. 21–22).
- 44.
The tablet may in fact be labelled as ‘lecture of Anu-ikṣur’, although the rubric is badly broken.
- 45.
Frahm (2011: 232–233, 332–338).
- 46.
Note that, as observed by Frahm (2011: 52), some of the entries commented upon in SpTU 1, 47 are not included in SpTU 1, 46, which suggests that the composer of the former had at least some other tablets at his disposal, and precludes the possibility of seeing SpTU 1, 47 directly as a commentary on SpTU 1, 46.
- 47.
Note that, despite the fact that they are identical sign by sign, there is no proof that both tablets were not copied from a third, non-Urukean manuscript.
- 48.
von Weiher (1979: 102).
- 49.
The edition by Koch-Westenholz (2000: 232–253 No. 42) includes no fewer than ten total or partial duplicates from Nineveh (to which K.17557, CCP 3.4.4.A.l, should be added). One cannot exclude the possibility, though, that the tablets from Nineveh reflect an originally Babylonian tradition.
- 50.
Tablets written in Assyrian script appear now and then in collections supposedly stemming from a Babylonian context (see e.g., the list in Lambert 1992: 73–80), but they are usually considered strays from Kuyunjik that were misplaced in other collections.
- 51.
Beaulieu (2010: 6–100) has argued that the serialization of the series Bārûtu established by Ninevite scholars was followed in Late Babylonian Uruk, since several extispicy tablets from Uruk follow closely the tradition from Nineveh , rather than the Babylonian one.
- 52.
The rubric actually states that the tablet was copied from a wooden writing board containing a mukallimtu-commentary on the astrological series Enūma Anu Enlil (ultu(ta) libbi(šà) lēʾi(gišda) mu-kal!-<lim>-tì ¶ u4 an d+en.líl.l[á (o o o o o)]). Note that the erroneous writing of the word mukallimtu may be due to the rarity of such texts in the Late Babylonian period. The other two Late Babylonian tablets classified as mukallimtu-commentaries are BM 45697 (LBAT 1564, CCP 3.1.54, whose rubric is very similar to that of SpTU 3, 101, see Frahm 2011: 165) and LKU 133 (CCP 3.4.1.A.h), a tablet copied from an original from Borsippa . It belonged to a scribe of the Iddin-Papsukkal family, some of whose members moved from Borsippa to Ur, and thence to Uruk, during the reign of Ashurbanipal (Nielsen 2009; Frahm 2011: 191, 289). Note also the commentary tablet TCL 6, 6 (CCP 3.4.3.G), which ‘displays all the typical features of a Nineveh mukallimtu’ (Frahm 2011: 176).
- 53.
Frahm (2011: 35, 42–43). Note that, beyond the ubiquity of the mukallimtu-commentaries in Nineveh and their extreme rarity in Babylonia , there is no proof that they were an Assyrian creation. It is conceivable that they were Babylonian creations that, for reasons unknown, are preserved only in three tablets from later Babylonia . The scarcity of mukallimtu-commentaries after the Neo-Assyrian period may be explicable as a trend: mukallimtu-commentaries may simply have been replaced by ṣâtu-commentaries then. The paucity of cuneiform documentation from Neo-Assyrian Babylonia may explain the lack of mukallimtu-commentaries from Babylonia . This possibility may be supported by the fact that seventeen mukallimtu-commentaries from Nineveh are written in Babylonian script. Note, however, that the only one of these seventeen commentaries to preserve a colophon , K.1315+ (CCP 3.4.4.A.i, a manuscript of the Padānu commentary A), states that it was copied from a dubgallu from Assyria .
- 54.
AfO Beih 27 pls. 28–29, CCP 3.7.2.F.c.
- 55.
See Reade apud Leichty (1986: xxx).
- 56.
- 57.
No known colophon on a commentary tablet ever indicates that a tablet was copied at Nippur . Instead, they refer to the ancestor as ‘the Sumerian’ (i.e., ‘the Nippurean’, see George 1991: 162), or else the names of the scribes or owners contain typical Nippurean theophoric elements (especially Enlil, Ninurta, and Nuska).
- 58.
Gimil-Sîn is called ‘the Sumerian’ (see previous footnote) in NBC 7843 (No. 7 below).
- 59.
On the Gimil-Nanāya’s archive, see fn. 68.
- 60.
The surface of the Ue 18/1 area, see von Weiher (1979: 96 No. 24).
- 61.
On the ancestor name, see Frahm (2011: 197 fn. 926 and 200 fn. 941). The name is only attested in one other commentary by the same scribe (NBC 7696, CCP 3.5.59), in which the name is written mdir.dutu.
- 62.
According to the information provided by the British Museum’s online catalog (http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/collection_object_details.aspx?objectId=793461&partId=1).
- 63.
Stolper (1988: 127–155).
- 64.
On the Nippur tablets from the Louvre, see van Driel (1986: 5–20).
- 65.
George (1991: 140).
- 66.
Frahm (2011: 223).
- 67.
See the discussion in Sect. 2.1 on exegetical traditions from northern versus central-southern Babylonia .
- 68.
- 69.
Interestingly, one of the documents of the archive, SpTU 5, 312 (which records the purchase of a prebend), contains a ḫepi-note, indicating that its Vorlage was broken at this point (l. 9′). As noted by Kessler 2003: 238, this suggests that the document was copied as a school exercise, as seems to have happened in the case of the documents in the Bēl-rēmanni archive in Sippar. It could also represent a copy of a document deemed to be important, but which was damaged at one point.
- 70.
- 71.
Note that there were also scribes from Babylon active in Hellenistic Uruk: see Boiy (2011).
- 72.
The colophon of SpTU 3, 101 (No. 4) may connect the Rīš-Gula branch of the Gimil-Sîn family with Enlil-bēlšunu son of Enlil-napištī-uṣur, although this may turn out to be another individual bearing the same name.
- 73.
A previous assessment of these colophons assigned some of these tablets to the Ur-Meme family, an important family attested at Nippur between the Old Akkadian and the Isin I period (Frahm 2011: 297–300). However, as studied below, it seems more likely that the sequence of signs ur (d)me.me, which appears in texts Nos. 2–4, is to be interpreted as an epithet of the scribe (amēl Gula, ‘man of Gula’, see below commentary on No. 2 l. 22′), rather than as the ancestor name. The writing ur (d)me.me is, however, probably a playful reference to the Ur-Meme family, whose members preceded the Gimil-Sîn’s in the office of nêšakku-priests of Enlil (Frahm 2011: 297): the Gimil-Sîn’s may have perceived themselves as heirs of their illustrious predecessors in the office. Note that the same logographic use of ur is attested in HS 1933, a copy of a tablet from Nippur that probably originated in that city as well, and whose colophon reads: (r 8′) kīma(gim) pī(ka) lēʾi(gišda) gabarê(gaba.ri) nippur (nibruki) ašre-e-mu-tu-d⌈x x⌉ […] | (r 9′) arad(ìr) dninnu-urta u dnissaba ur ⌈dnin-kár?-rak⌉? […] | (r 10′) ṭup-pi mninurta(dmaš)-ašarēd(s[ag.kal)-ilī(dingirmeš) (?) …], ‘According to the words of a writing board, whose original was from Nippur , Rēmūt-D[N …], the servant of Ninurta and Nissaba, the man of Ninkarrak (?) […]. Tablet of Ninurta-a[šarēd-ilī …]’. The tablet HS 1933 was published by Scheil (1914: 142–145) who, however, omitted the colophon , and edited by Reiner and Pingree (1998: 123–125 as ‘N unnumbered’). It will be edited by Enrique Jiménez in a forthcoming volume of the Texte und Materialien der Frau Professor Hilprecht Collection series.
- 74.
The same formulation is also found in a colophon of the Nippurean kalû Enlil-kāṣir, see Civil (1974, 337: 33): lú dingir.bi dnuska.ke4.
- 75.
Note a šá also in the colophons of the Nippurean kalû Enlil-kāṣir, see Civil (1974: 333 l. 54) (CCP 4.2.A.a) and TCL 6, 47, as well as in economic documents from Nippur (e.g., van der Spek 1992: 250–260, in Seleucid tablets). Although this could be a chronological phenomenon, it is interesting to note that Uruk colophons from the same period tend to have the traditional longer mārūšu ša formulation, as in the colophon of No. 5 below (SpTU 3, 67), which was owned by a Nippurean from the Gimil-Sîn family but written by an Urukean scribe from the Gimil-Nanāya family.
- 76.
The line numeration follows W. G. Lambert’s manuscript edition of An = Anum I (kept in the Yale Babylonian Collection), and corresponds to An = Anum I 260 in Litke’s edition (Litke 1998: 51–260). The restoration of Dumuzi -Abzu is confirmed by a Late Babylonian manuscript used by Lambert but not by Litke (BM 64393), which reads ddumu-zi-zu.ab (the Old Babylonian forerunner TCL 15 pl. 26 l. 138 reads ddumu-⌈zu.ab⌉, which Lambert considers to be a scribal error for ddumu-<zi>-zu.ab).
- 77.
The equation en = ilu is unattested, but compare the common equations en = bēlu, dingir = ilu, and dingir = bēlu (see attestations in CAD B 192). Cf. also Frahm (2011, 196, n. 921).
- 78.
kabtu can also be equated with bad (i.e., Ea), as well as with umun (i.e., Bēl, see CAD K 25).
- 79.
George (1993: 118 No. 693).
- 80.
Farber (1999: 133).
- 81.
Farber (1987: 36). The same writing can be found in one of the manuscripts of the cultic commentary on the lilissu-ritual, preserved in two tablets originally from Nippur (AO 17626 [RA 41, 31] and O 175 [TCL 6, 47]) and one from Uruk (W 20030/122 [BagM Beih 2 8]). Whereas O 175 reads pap 7 den-lílmeš ki-šit-ti, ‘Total: 7 defeated Enlils’ (Livingstone 1986: 194 bottom right); AO 17626 r 8 reads pap 7 dingir.dingir.dingirmeš ki-šit-tu4, which Livingstone (1986: 198) renders as ‘7 ilāni ilāni kišittū’ and Lambert (2013: 212) believes to be ‘no doubt corrupt’. The line is, however, not corrupt: it contains another instance of the writing of Enlil’s name as dingir.dingir.dingir.
- 82.
As discussed by Frahm (2011: 196 fn. 921).
- 83.
This writing for Nuska is also found in an extract of Atraḫasīs in the Achaemenid school tablet from Nippur UM 55-21-29 (in preparation for publication by Jiménez), which suggests that the writing might have been a Nippurean scribal convention more common than it was previously assumed.
- 84.
But cf. Geller (2010: 170).
- 85.
- 86.
On the entry ddùl = Šamaš , see also Dalley (1986: 88–89).
- 87.
No. 4 (W 23277) was found in ‘Ue XVIII 1, Schicht II, R.B’ (von Weiher 1979: 103); No. 6 in ‘Ue XVIII 1, Wohnhaus nördl. neben Schicht I, Schicht II’ (von Weiher 1979: 97); No. 9 in ‘Ue XVIII 1, Schicht II, R.C’. (von Weiher 1979: 103); and No. 10 in ‘Ue XVIII 1, Schicht II, Wohnhaus, ob.Fb.’ (von Weiher 1979: 96).
- 88.
- 89.
Çığ, Kizilyay and Kraus (1952: 2 = 58), Kraus (1972: ix), Lambert and Millard (1969: 37), Civil (2011: 222 fn. 5), and Farber (2014: 22 fn. 49). The Nippur collection in the Istanbul Archaeological Museums comprises some 17,000 tablets, found during the four archaeological campaigns of the University of Pennsylvania in Nippur between 1889 and 1900 (Kraus 1947: 107; Donbaz and Stolper 1997: 1–2). Note that Si.276 could not come from Uruk, since the small Uruk collection of the Istanbul Archaeological Museums comes from Jordan’s excavations in Uruk in 1912/1913, some twenty years after the tablet was accessioned in the museum (Kraus 1947: 118). Frahm (2011: 237 fn. 1107) already proposed that the tablet ‘may well have been written by a Nippur scribe ’.
- 90.
If this tablet stemmed from Nippur , this would be reminiscent of the distribution of the collection of a Nippurean scholar, Enlil-kāṣir, from the Ludumununa family. Three tablets excavated at Nippur , datable to the Achaemenid period based on a document from the reign of Cyrus that was found in their vicinity (Civil 1974: 330), belonged to Enlil-kāṣir. A fourth tablet belonging to the same scholar (TCL 6, 47), a commentary on the lilissu ritual, arrived in European collections together with many other tablets from Uruk (Frahm 2011: 302–303; Gabbay 2014: 130–137, 264).
- 91.
See Stigers (1953: 15) and Dillard (1975: 9). They were acquired by Lewis from various dealers in the United States and Europe during the first quarter of the twentieth century, and donated to the FLP in 1930 (Dillard 1975: 3; Owen 1975: 13, 31 n. 4). As kindly pointed out to us by Christopher Walker, some tablets in the Free Library collection are dated at Nippur , e.g., FLP 1453. This fact suggests that the two commentary tablets studied here might in fact stem from that city. Thanks are expressed to Shiyanthi Thavapalan for her assistance in consulting these bibliographical references.
- 92.
- 93.
See McEwan (1994: 1) and Gurney (1989: 10). The other tablets of the group are published as OECT 10 12, 391–394, and 397–400. According to Paul Collins, Curator for Ancient Near East, Ashmolean Museum (personal communication, 5/2015), OECT 10 3 (Ashm.1932,519, dated at Ḫursagkalama) and OECT 10 6 (Ashm.1929,22, dated at Babylon ), have been identified as probably belonging to this group (the latter also in McEwan 1994: 1), although the Ashmolean register assigns them to Kiš.
- 94.
- 95.
Krabbenhøft (2006).
- 96.
McEwan (1982: ix, xvii–xviii).
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Acknowledgements
Section 2.1 of the article is mostly the work of Uri Gabbay, with suggestions from Enrique Jiménez, whereas Sects. 2.2 and 2.3 were written by Enrique Jiménez, with suggestions and additions by Uri Gabbay. Both authors are responsible for the final version of the article, as well as for the editions of colophons in Sect. 2.4. The authors wish to express their gratitude to E. Frahm and M. Frazer, who read previous versions of this article and made numerous suggestions and corrections.
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Gabbay, U., Jiménez, E. (2019). Cultural Imports and Local Products in the Commentaries from Uruk. The Case of the Gimil-Sîn Family. In: Proust, C., Steele, J. (eds) Scholars and Scholarship in Late Babylonian Uruk. Why the Sciences of the Ancient World Matter, vol 2. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-04176-2_2
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