Nuzi Texts and Their Uses as Historical Evidence.

• Author: Lion, Brigitte
• Position: Book review

Nuzi Texts and Their Uses as Historical Evidence. By MAYNARD PAUL MAIDMAN. Writings from the Ancient World, vol. 18. Atlanta: SOCIETY OF BIBLICAL LITERATURE, 2010. Pp. xxvi + 296. $34.95.

In this book M. P. Maidman offers in transliteration and translation a selection of ninety-six texts dated to the fourteenth century (of a total of 6000 documents unearthed at ancient Nuzi, modern Yor-ghan Tepe). The introduction stresses the great historical value of this corpus. Arrapbe, the capital of the kingdom to which Nuzi belonged, is located under the modern town of Kirkuk and has thus not been excavated. However, Nuzi, which lies 13 km away, was an important town, and the tablets discovered there are all the more important since the sources available on the Mittani empire, which ruled over the entire region, are scarce. The Nuzi texts were mostly found in well-known archaeological contexts: official buildings, temples, and houses. They are quite varied: public archives, often of administrative nature, but also private documents, mostly contracts. Since the scribes did not use date formulae, it is only possible to order them according to a relative chronology based on the succession of generations. Thus, they are here presented in the first four chapters of the book according to the order considered the most logical by the author, but their succession through time is not absolutely certain. In the last chapter the presentation is made according to the topics treated.

The first chapter deals with the contacts between the Arraptie kingdom and its nearest neighbor, Assyria. The tablets of Nuzi show that during an initial phase the relations were quite balanced. But there are also mentions of confrontations, which the author assigns to a second phase, when the power of Mittani had collapsed: the Assyrians, under the rule of Anur-uballit I, freed themselves from its authority and attacked their neighbor. References to battles taking place in the region of Turga, near the border, as well as in other towns, including Lubti, south of Nuzi, seem to indicate that Aggur-uballit took the towns from the Arrapbe kingdom and surrounded the capital in order to isolate its position. These texts would date to the end of the occupation of the site of Nuzi.

The affair of the exactions of the hazannu Ktai-barpe has not been reassessed as a whole since the first publication of the texts in 1936, in spite of its spectacular character, without known parallel in the...