Mesopotamien: Akkade-Zeit und Ur III-Zeit. Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis, vol. 160.3.

• Author: Foster, Benjamin R.
• Position: Review

Mesopotamien: Akkade-Zeit und Ur III-Zeit. Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis, vol. 160.3 By WALTHER SALLABERGER and AAGE WESTENHOLZ. Freiburg, Switzerland: UNIVERSITATSVERLAG, 1999. Pp. 414, map. PS 118.

This volume completes a series of "Annaherungen" for Mesopotamian history of the third millennium B.C., with emphasis on written documents. The two essays in this part focus on the Sargonic or Akkadian period (Westenholz) and the Ur III period (Sallaberger). The latter essay, in reality a monograph of near]y three hundred dense pages, is a brilliant achievement. It brings order, for the first time, to a discipline with nearly forty thousand published documents, a mass of inscriptions and literary works, and a century of continuous scholarly publication. Sallaberger's synthesis is sober, sensible, mostly non-polemic, and shows a perfect mastery of the subject as it stands today. The art, literature, and often problematic archaeology of the Ur III period have here less prominence than the documents, though architecture is systematically referred to. Amidst so much information, the occasional blunder can readily be forgiven, such as confusing Yale University with the University of Pennsylvania (p. 176, note 187 ; p. 351). Amidst the cool, disciplined rigor of his argument an occasional digression refreshes; my favorite was the appeal for publication of cuneiform texts in copies in preference to other methods (p. 204). Perhaps this generation will see one of the great Ur III archives like Girsu or Umma collected and systematically analyzed both in breadth and depth. The result will be a detailed picture of management and economy impossible anywhere else in the ancient world. Sallaberger's essay is an important step in this direction, as it shows that the individual scholar, working with vision and exactitude, can in fact achieve positive and constructive results with this intractable mass of material. This is an astonishing and admirable piece of work, compelling and precise.

Westenholz' treatment of the Sargonic period has quite a different tone, often reading more like a running critique of the field, sometimes biting, sometimes quirky and entertaining, than an essay for beginners. One reason for this, as he makes clear, is that the few specialists doing primary work in the period have such different approaches, interests, and styles, that their work seldom overlaps save for the occasional spark of polemic. Westenholz' control of the evidence for...