A Cuneiform Texts from the Ur III Period in the Oriental Institute, vol. 1: Drehem Administrative Documents from the Reign of Sulgi.

• Author: HEIMPEL, WOLFGANG
• Position: Review

Cuneiform Texts from the Ur III Period in the Oriental Institute, vol. 1: Drehem Administrative Documents from the Reign of Sulgi. By MARKUS HILGERT. Oriental Institute Publications, vol. 115. Chicago: THE ORIENTAL INSTITUTE OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO, 1998. Pp. xxxii + 532. 44 plates. $100.

This new blue volume of Oriental Institute Publications is the first in a series of editions of the sizable collection of Ur III texts in the Asiatic collection of the Oriental Institute Museum of the University of Chicago. Markus Hilgert can be congratulated for a thorough, accurate, and intelligent edition of 499 tablets and a few envelopes purchased between 1920 and 1952, all of the type that we call Drehem texts, and all from the reign of Sulgi. The texts are edited in transliteration. In addition, photographs of high quality are given of a few tablets with noteworthy features, including the four large four-column tablets and the seal impressions. Sixty-two tablets are given in hand copies. The accuracy of transliterations and copies will be tested over time by collations. Hilgert's statement that "transliterations were checked against the original several times and as carefully as possible" is heartening.

Hilgert, unlike other authors of Ur III editions, arranges the texts by "archives" and "bureaus." He rightly cautions that these terms simply reflect unproven assumptions that officials repeatedly mentioned as receivers and disbursers of goods or services headed bureaus and that their records constituted their archives. Still, the arrangement of the texts according to these officials is the best one can do.

The indices are complete, well arranged, and readable. Hilgert identifies individuals bearing the same name, for example three persons named [Arad-gu.sub.10] and three Sillus-Dagan, thus offering a rudimentary prosopographical index. The "index of Sumerian words," which includes some Akkadian words as well, is a little mechanical. References are listed in the sequence of publication numbers, which prevents meaningful groupings and brings about much repetition. For example, the references to the word e-gal easily separate into the semantic and orthographic groups e-gal-la [ba-an-ku.sub.4], e-gal-se, sa e-gal sa e-gal-la, sa e-gal-se, e-gal-ta e-a, and e-gal-mah. The use of publication numbers as a criterion of listing disrupts these groups while e-gal-mah, which is the name of Ninisina's temple, deserves an entry on its own. Alphabetical arrangement would have been helpful in many cases (ki...