Bar-Ilan Studies in Assyriology Dedicated to Pinhas Artzi.

• Author: Lieberman, Stephen J.

Pinhas Artzi was born in Hungary and got his training there. He was educated both at the Rabbinical Seminary of Budapest and in Assyriology under Antal David. (J. Aistleitner filled the formal position of dissertation adviser.) He moved to Israel in 1950 and joined the faculty of Bar-Ilan University in 1956. A specialist in the letters found at El-Amarna, he has also written on texts excavated at Mari and Ebla, and his abiding interest in Sumerian made itself clear when he co-authored an edition of documents from the time of the third dynasty of Ur.

Artzi's work at Bar-Ilan has been particularly fruitful, not only through his own writings, but because of those scholars he was able to bring to join him at Bar-Ilan, a number of them his own students. The importance of the work he has carried out, both alone and with or through his younger colleagues, was recognized in 1982 by the creation at Bar-Ilan University of an Institute of Assyriology. The attachment of the name of Samuel Noah Kramer, the late master of Sumerian literature, to the Institute (after the publication of this volume), and Kramer's donation of his personal library to the Institute are marks of the excellence and the significance of Artzi's efforts.

The present book is approximately evenly divided between Sumerian studies and Assyriology. Some of the Sumerian papers were read at the symposium on Sumerian literature held in connection with the inauguration of the Institute. Both the man, whose warmth, concerns, and efforts stand behind the creation of the Institute, and the scholar, who has now given his name and his books to it, have contributed articles to the volume.

Samuel N. Kramer's re-edition of the literary text known as "The Marriage of Martu," one of the last articles from Kramer's desk, shows this master of Sumerian literature at full strength, revising his earlier comments on the composition based on renewed study of the original tablet. A number of scholars have referred to this text in connection with studies of the West Semitic contacts with Mesopotamian civilization at the end of the third and beginning of the second millennia. The description of the mores of the god Mardu near the end of the text are thought to reflect cultures far to the west of Sumer.

The treatment is "vintage Kramer." Professor Kramer modestly emphasizes the tentative nature of his translations and conclusions, while struggling vigorously with the text. The way that he responded to suggestions from one of the editors of the volume, Jacob Klein, is also characteristic.

Kramer seems to assume that Mardu has been "unfairly treated" because he puts down two loaves of bread before the god An (married men offered two loaves, those with a child three, and single men a single loaf). One can, however, interpret the god's putting down two loaves as the first step in his search for a mate, which would make sense of line 43, which reads (in Kramer's translation): "My mother, take a wife for me, I would bring you my bread-offerings." The god's addition to what was strictly required of him is also referred to in line 33, where the first grapheme is mas, most likely followed by e (both collated).

Collation of the tablet allows a few other improved readings for this text: line 14 begins with the divine determinative, though the second half of it is destroyed; line 27 has no -un-; neither the copy of line 45 nor the tablet shows a ri before the (indented) na; in line 105, the last word may be read, perhaps, hu-mu-un-si-gal-e; the first visible word in 116 is |ab-b~ a-ab-ba-ar (cf. Klein's reading of line 114 on p. 27), but there may be another short grapheme preceding it; and in 140 the verb reads mu-|n~a-|ni-ib-d~ a-|gi.sub.4~-|gi.sub.4~ (restore 44 accordingly). Kramer's struggle with this recalcitrant text has advanced our understanding of it, and a new (forthcoming) treatment by Klein will, no doubt, add to the progress in interpreting this 142-line composition.

The second article in the volume likewise comes from a pen now, alas, stilled. Raphael Kutscher approaches the much-treated topic of the god Dumuzi from the perspective of the Sumerian administrative documents, surveying them chronologically and paying careful attention to the cities from which they come. He believes that, in contrast to the many important literary texts concerning this god, "his share in practical worship ... is quite small," and explains this by contending that his cult was "mostly ... a popular, unofficial affair, performed in the city squares and the fields outside the cities." He does not, however, explain how this hypothesis can be squared with the identification of the ruler with the god in "sacred marriage" texts, nor does he show how this surmise follows from the evidence he has so carefully gathered.

Next, Yitschak Sefati edits a text (Dumuzi-Inana B) concerning the very same god. Basing himself on a careful study of the copy, his own checking on photographs, and A. W. Sjoberg's collations of the original tablet in Istanbul, Sefati has advanced the reading of a number of the words in the text. He thinks "of the Dumuzi-Inanan songs ... as cultic compositions," and thinks that this love-song "was recited or chanted at one of the stages of the sacred marriage rite."

Th. Jacobsen published an edition of this...