Legal and Administrative Texts from the Reign of Nabonidus.

• Author: Dandamayev, M.A.
• Position: Reviews of Books

Legal and Administrative Texts from the Reign of Nabonidus. By PAUL-ALAIN BEAULIEU. Yale Oriental Series, Babylonian Texts, vol. 19. New Haven: YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS. Pp. xii + 288, plates. $60.

This volume contains an introduction, catalogue of texts, various indices, and autographed copies (without transliteration and translation) of 313 cuneiform documents dated to the reign of the last native Mesopotamian king, Nabonidus (556-539 B.C.). Except for one tablet from the Harvard Semitic Museum (No. 101 of this volume), all these texts come from various cuneiform collections housed at Yale, from whose holdings 431 economic and administrative documents dated to Nabonidus had previously been published.

The great majority of the texts in the volume under review come from Uruk and its region and belong to the archives of the Eanna temple, while twenty-one tablets were drafted at Borsippa and its neighborhood, nineteen at Larsa, and eleven at Nippur or in its surroundings. A few remaining tablets were drawn up in other cities, including one each from Sidunu and Elammu. The editor assumes that the first of these toponyms "is possibly a namesake of Sidon located in Babylonia rather than the Phoenician city itself" (p. 7 n. 18). This text (No. 32) is a promissory note for a quantity of barley to be paid to a certain Nabu-ah-usur, son of NabQ-uterri, by a person whose name is damaged. In No. 28 a certain Bel-etir-Samas, son of Aplaja, is attested as a debtor to this Nabu-ah-usur. The document itself was drafted in Sarranu, which is unknown to us from other sources. As to Bel-etir-Samas, he is referred to in various texts as a tenant, creditor, etc., and these documents might help us to localize Sidunu. For instanc e, No. 8, where he buys a slave, was drawn up in Nippur. He is also listed among witnesses of one more transaction made in Nippur (No. 16). As a tenant of a field, he appears in two documents according to which he was to deliver a quantity of barley in Nippur (Nos. 36 and 80). Thus, it is reasonable to conclude that this Siduno was indeed located in Babylonia, in the Nippur region.

It is much more difficult to establish whether Elammu (see No. 25) was the well-known town which was located to the west of the Euphrates or a village near Uruk named after Elammu in Syria. In any case, in this document, which is a promissory note for a loan of silver, all the principals and witnesses bear Babylonian names.

The contents of the documents here are very diverse: letters of the crown prince Belshazzar to the royal commissioner in the Eanna temple concerning cultic matters, lease and sales of...