Textes akkadiens d'Ugarit: Textes provenant des vingt-cinq premieres campagnes.

• Position: Book Review

Textes akkadiens d'Ugarit: Textes provenant des vingt-cinq premieres campagnes. By SYLVIE LACKENBACHER. Litteratures anciennes du Proche-Orient, vol. 20. Paris: EDITIONS DU CERF, 2002, Pp. 397. [euro]33.

We are fortunate now to have available an impressive collection of some 250 Akkadian documents from the city of Ugarit expertly translated into French by Sylvie Lackenbacher. Many of the documents were collated (some from plaster casts), supplemented with numerous improved readings, detailed discussion, and updated bibliography. The collection was chosen almost exclusively from texts published by Nougayrol in PRU III, IV, VI, and Ugaritica V. Anyone searching for materials recently published will have to look elsewhere, with the guidance of Lackenbacher's references. At first glance, this may seem a disappointment, but that is not the case. The strength of this book lies not in its comprehensiveness, but rather in its thematic presentation. By placing the treaties and edicts first, followed by the international correspondence, and finally documents related to the internal affairs of Ugarit, the author offers us a typology of the socio-political behavior of the city and its geographical milieu. We then realize that the historical data can display a different dimension when structurally arranged as an assembly of social habits. As Lackenbacher orders these translations side by side, displaying an exceptional sensitivity to the original language in which they were written, we can detect recurring patterns of diplomatic speech more easily, analyze the formulaic requests for gifts, and understand better the role of women in Ugaritic society.

The introduction of the book is devoted to the contextual setting of the evidence at hand. Lackenbacher discusses the limited chronological scope of the archives, emphasizing that most of the written sources data from the reign of Ammistamru "II" and onward (thirteenth century); only a handful of documents have survived from the reigns of previous kings. Moving on to discuss the contents of the various archives, we see that the treaties with the Hittites were archived in the palace, along with tablets concerned with the king's affairs (pp. 208ff.), such as land donations, many authenticated by the royal dynastic seal (whose reproduction adorns the book's cover). The international correspondence, of which only a handful of tablets were written in Ugarit (e.g., p. 174 [RS 16.112])--the vast majority being documents arriving from outside the city--were likewise archived in the palace. However...