Keilschrifttexte aus japanischen Sammlungen.

• Author: Sharlach, T.M.
• Position: Book Review

Keilschrifttexte aus japanischen Sammlungen. By OZAKI TOHRU. SANTAG, vol. 7. Wiesbaden: HARRASSOWITZ VERLAG, 2002. Pp. 148, plates. [euro]68.

In this volume, Ozaki publishes 203 new texts from various collections in Japan, including those of the Tokyo National Museum, the National Museum of Ethnology in Osaka, and various private collections. The texts are published in transliteration with some brief commentary, and forty-six plates of beautiful copies. There are also detailed indices of vocabulary, divine names, personal names, and geographical names.

Of the 203 texts, more than eighty percent date from the Third Dynasty of Ur. Ozaki has also presented tablets from other periods in this volume: five from the Early Dynastic period, seven from the Sargonic period, nine from the time of Gudea, thirteen Old Babylonian and three Neo-Babylonian texts, many of these being duplicates of royal building inscriptions published elsewhere. The Ur III documents mainly come from Puzris-Dagan, though Umma and Lagash tablets are also well represented.

According to the author, all but nineteen of the texts have never been published before. However, it seems that some of the tablets in the Ethnology Museum in Osaka were published in 1911, at which time they were in the possession of a private collector in France. Thus,

No. 92 = RA 8 (1911): 192-93, No. 14 (as noted by Ozaki, p. 30)

No. 114 = RA 8 (1911): 192, No. 13

No. 116 = RA 8 (1911): 189-90, No. 8

No. 123 = RA 8 (1911): 188-89, No. 7

No. 128 = RA 8 (1911): 194-95, No. 17 (as noted by Ozaki, p. 30)

No. 132 = RA 8 (1911): 196, No. 20 (as noted by Ozaki, p. 30)

No. 188 = RA 8 (1911): 195, No. 18.

The copies show that these are, without any doubt, the selfsame tablets. How they came from France to Osaka is somewhat mysterious.

Small tablet collections tend to be heterogeneous, and the collections presented here are no exception. Because the tablets are grouped by collection, similar tablets may be widely separated in the volume. For example, the five Early Dynastic documents are Nos. 1, 5, 8, 61, and 195. Although the author has made a list of tablets according to date and content (for example royal inscriptions, transfers of livestock, textiles, etc.), it is somewhat disconcerting to be reading through a group of Ur III administrative documents and come across Nebuchadnezzar! This quibble aside, Ozaki has, as usual, published a book of the highest quality, which will serve scholars for many years to come.

I focus my remarks here on four topics: offerings for religious purposes, furniture, the musician Dada and his family, and field allocations. Unless otherwise stated, comments are on Ur III tablets.

Offerings for Religious Purposes. Text 31: This is a fragment of a very large account, probably originally having six columns per side. It lists expenditures of foods, spices, ceramics, and other supplies, many of them for cultic use--e.g., for the full-moon celebrations (e-ud-15), libations of milk for the "Holy Hill" (ga dul-kug), sacrifices for the sungod (sizkur [.sup.d]utu via a woman named Geme-barag-siga and the more usual sizkur ki-[.sup.d]utu on seventh day), sacrifices for the royal barge (sizkur ma-gur[.sub.8] lugal) and so on. Ozaki has classified the text as an Umma document. Perhaps a Lagash provenance is more plausible, however, as its closest parallels in tablet format and prosopography are to Lagash texts. Such tablets may serve to remind us...