Catalogue of Cuneiform Tablets in Birmingham City Museum, vol. 2, Neo-Sumerian Texts from Umma and Other Sites.

• Author: Cohen, Mark E.

In this second volume of the Catalogue of Cuneiform Tablets in Birmingham City Museum, P. J. Watson has completed the publication of the Ur III tablets formerly in the Sir Henry Wellcome Collection. The first volume contained 139 tablets from Drehem. This second volume presents texts mainly from Umma, although several are from Girsu, and one from Drehem. Drawings of the seal impressions appear separately from the text copies, at the end of the volume.

Watson has prepared a history of the Wellcome Collection (source and date of acquisition); a tablet registry (date, provenance, and subject); a list of dimensions; and a concordance arranged by catalogue number and by Wellcome number. There are indices of personal names (including parental relationships and professions); divine names; geographical names; toponyms; and a glossary (with the main entry accompanied by an English translation).

The text copies have been numbered and grouped by subject matter. The content of the tablets is fairly representative of the Umma corpus as a whole, including gurus-worker texts; receipts; account tablets; messenger texts; ration lists; and lists of workers, livestock, and commodities. In addition, the volume contains five letter orders.

These texts include some interesting expressions: no. 3: [eger.sub.6]-gar-ra-ta zi-zi-ga-bi i-zi on a tablet dealing with arrears of sheep; no. 10: su mas ba-ab-[du.sub.11] on a text dealing with taxed sheep (udu-gu-na) owed from three years prior.

Below are observations on index entries or text copies.

Catalogue: I suggest the provenance of the following tablets for which no provenance is listed in the catalogue. Umma: nos. 55, 109, 127, 129, 131, 153, 156, 287, 294, 297; Lagash: nos. 108, 286, 291.

Personal Names, p. 25: Watson reads [Geme-.sup.d]A-sar, yet on p. 53 [Ur-.sup.d]A-hi appears. The reading of this god's name has not been established, some even transliterating [Ur-.sup.d]A-[du.sub.10].

Index of Divine Names, pp. 67-68: The entry sub dGu-la for 13:2 is incorrect; rather the line is [u.sub.4]-[sakar.sub.x]-gu-la (which is correctly listed in the glossary on p. 110).

AN-[ku.sub.4]-ra, instead of being a god name, may be a reference to a cultic ceremony (cf. M. E. Cohen, The Cultic Calendars of the Ancient Near East [Bethesda, Md.: CDL Press, 1993], pp. 138-39).

Watson reads dGestin-an-na-sag-40, which agrees with his copy. However, the "40"-sign wraps around the right edge of the tablet. [Nik.sup.1] 2 no. 236 in a...