Archaische Verwaltungstexte aus Uruk: Die Heidelberger Sammlung.

• Author: Rubio, Gonzalo
• Position: Book review

Archaische Verwaltungstexte aus Uruk: Die Heidelberger Sammlung. By ROBERT K. ENGLUND and HANS J. NISSEN. Archaische Texte aus Uruk, vol. 7. Berlin: GEBRUDER MANN, 2001. Pp. 71, plates. DM 104.

The present volume includes a catalogue, transliteration, and copies of all the archaic or "protocuneiform" texts at the University of Heidelberg. These tablets and fragments were unearthed at Warka between the twelfth (1953-54) and the twenty-sixth excavation campaigns (1968). The texts date to the Uruk IV and Uruk III periods, with one exception (W 19412,1; plt. 7) dating to Early Dynastic I. Photographs of all these texts, along with transliterations and catalogue descriptions, are now available on line as well, as part of the Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (http://cdli.ucla.edu/). The sixteen seal impressions included in this corpus are studied by Rainer M. Boehmer (pp. 11-13) and appear reproduced in photographs at the end of the volume.

Although the vast majority of texts are administrative, eight are lexical. The contexts of these textual witnesses of archaic lexical lists can now be explored through Niek Veldhuis' on-line Digital Corpus of Cuneiform Lexical Texts (http://cuneiform.ucla.edu/dcclt/index.html). Five of these eight lexical fragments belong to well-attested archaic lexical lists: List of Officials (HD 5, 6, 7; cf. ATU 3 pits. 25-27), List of Animals A (HD 10; cf. ATU 3 pits. 28-30), and List of Vessels (HD 11, cf. ATU 3 pits. 39, 54-67, MSVO 1: 242). Another (HD 9) may have a parallel in the Early Dynastic corpus from Abu Salabih (OIP 99: 459), both fragments including the sequence UR.UR, concerning which see A. Cavigneaux and Farouk N. H. Al-Rawi, Gilgames et la mort: Textes de Tell Haddad VI (Groningen, 2000), 50-51. The remaining two lexical fragments (HD 8 and 12) may correspond to lists of metals.

The transliteration system employed in all the ATU and MSVO volumes attempts to convey the smallest variations in sign shapes. These careful conventions sometimes result in questionable distinctions, as when two slightly different realizations of the same sign (ZATU-219) are identified respectively as [GIR.sub.3] (W 19948,16: p. 41 plt. 28) and [GIR.sub.3]-gund (W 20044,7; p. 42 plt. 31). This is most likely the ancestor of the sign ALIM ("aurochs"). Moreover, the reading of ZATU-297 as KIS (W 20274,52; pl...