He Has Opened Nisaba's House of Learning: Studies in Honor of [Angstrom]ke Waldemar Sjoberg on the Occasion of His 89th Birthday on August 1st 2013.

• Author: Kleinerman, Alexandra
• Position: Book review

He Has Opened Nisaba's House of Learning: Studies in Honor of [Angstrom]ke Waldemar Sjoberg on the Occasion of His 89th Birthday on August 1st 2013. Edited by LEONARD SASSMANNSHAUSEN and GEORG NEUMANN. Cuneiform Monographs, vol. 46. Leiden: BRILL, 2014. Pp. x + 319, illus. $162.

The present volume honors [Angstrom]ke Sjoberg for having "opened Nisaba's house of learning" through his research and through nurturing others in the "house" (p. vii). Articles celebrate Sjoberg's interests and achievements in Sumerology by presenting new texts or updated editions, by offering lexical studies, or by treating topics such as the structure of the Sumerian debate poems or the Early Dynastic lexical tradition. M. Cohen publishes a new Sumerian lamentation to Inana or Dumuzi (correct the tablet number published as CUNES 53-08-060 to CUNES 52-08-060). B. Alster offers an edition of two bilingual Neo-Assyrian proverbs, re-edited in light of new evidence. J. Bauer re-interprets two problematic texts from Fara/Abu Salabikh as personal name lists. J. Klein and Y. Sefati provide a lexical study of the terms mul and mul-an in Sulgi B 305-19 and Sulgi E 242-57, arguing against the conventional interpretation that these are "poetic expressions for cuneiform writing" (p. 85). B. Foster investigates diorite and limestone "as case studies in how the Sumerian poet of Lugale explained and understood their use" (p. 52; for a similar investigation of the hematite stone see Simko 2014). This review comments only on contributions for which there is new evidence or for which further investigation is required.

In "Two Lullabies," M. Jaques publishes one text from the Old Babylonian period (note CT 58, 22 is BM 38099 not BM 96936) and another from Kassite Nippur, both of which bear resemblance to the lullaby Sulgi N (p. 61). Jaques addresses the genres of texts concerning babies, incantations and lullabies, in order to differentiate between them, and to determine the occasions for which they were composed (pp. 68-70). She suggests that lullabies, which "use a literary language," were part of the Old Babylonian Sumerian scribal curriculum (p. 70) and speculates that their inclusion in it "could have been [due to] their literary qualities and historical importance" (p. 70). Jaques posits that Sulgi N was written to commemorate the birth of his son, and that her texts may have been forerunners to Sulgi N or composed "for other parallel occasions" (p. 71).

These assertions...