From Mesopotamia to Lebanon: The Jawad Adra Cuneiform Collection in the Nabu Museum, El Heri, Lebanon

This volume presents critical editions of tablets from the Early Dynastic, Sargonic, Ur III, Old Babylonian, and Middle Babylonian periods, housed in the Jawad Adra Cuneiform Collection in the Nabu Museum in El Heri, Lebanon. Bringing together a wide range of administrative, literary, historical, and lexical texts, From Mesopotamia to Lebanon is a valuable survey of representative documents from the third and second millennia BCE in Mesopotamia.

Culled from the most significant collection of cuneiform tablets in Lebanon, the documents published here mainly derive from southern Iraq. Despite a wide chronological span, internal evidence indicates that they likely originate from various sites in two main areas: the first close to the ancient bank of the Tigris River, in the ancient cities of Adab, Irisaĝrig, and Umma and their environs; the second along the bank of the Euphrates River, in and around the cities of Isin and Shuruppak. The presence of school and literary tablets within the archival group suggests that one or more of these sites contained a scribal school. Taken together, the texts of the Adra Collection cover one and a half millennia (2600-1100 BCE), from the early period of the Sumerian city-states to the time when the region was ruled successively by the kings of Akkad, followed by the kingdoms of Ur, Isin, Larsa, and, finally, Babylon.

The two editors and six contributors represent an international group of scholars who provide critical editions of texts in their respective areas of expertise. In addition to the editors, the contributors to this volume are Alhena Gadotti, Alexandra Kleinerman, Camille Lecompte, Nordine Ouraghi, Jacques Quillien, and Wilfred van Soldt.

Bertrand Lafont is Research Director at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in Paris.

David I. Owen is Bernard and Jane Schapiro Professor Emeritus of Ancient Near Eastern and Judaic Studies at Cornell University.