NISABA 34 - The Rosen Collection Texts at the Yale Peabody Museum - Tohru Ozaki – Marcel Sigrist – Sergio Tang

In 4°, 398 pp.

Individual price € 70,00
Institutional price € 120,00

Table of Contents

 I Foreword
 II Preface 
 III Catalogue 
 IV Classification of the Texts According to their Date and Provenience
1. Date – Text – Provenience 
2. Provenience – Date – Text 
3. Provenience – Text – Date 
V List of Seal Inscriptions 
VI Concordances of Museum Numbers
1. YPM BC no. – RBC no. – Old no. – Text no. 
2. RBC no. – YPM BC no. – Old no. – Text no. 
3. Old no. – YPM BC no. – RBC no. – Text no. 
VII List of Previously Published Texts 
VIII Texts Nos. 1-1204 
IX Indexes
1. Names of Deities and Deified Kings 
2. Personal Names
3. Geographical Names 
4. Words and Phrases 
 

Foreword
Succeeding to Professor Francesco Pomponio, who is now retired, in the capacity of Scientific Director of the Series Nisaba. Studi Assiriologici Messinesi, is an honour that fills me with pride and gratitude, and also with an awareness of how challenging it is to collect Professor Pomponio’s legacy at the University of Messina. The Nisaba Series, active since 2002 and now on its 34th volume, has hosted the first editions of economic-administrative tablets and documents from the Neo-Sumerian period and of other periods, such as the Early-Dynastic, the Sargonic or Old-Akkadian, the Old-Babylonian period, the Neo- and Late-Babylonian, up to the Achaemenid and Seleucid periods. In each volume, the texts' publication is always completed by the indexes of Deity Names, Place Names, Personal Names and, sometimes, even of the words mentioned in the published tablets and of the seals' owners, as in this publication.
Except for some volumes, such as Lorenzo Verderame’s Le tavole I-VI della serie astronomica Enūma Anu Enlil, NISABA, vol. 2, Messina 2002, and the 14th volume by Enrico Ascalone, Archeologia dell’Iran antico. Interazioni, integrazioni e discontinuità nell’Iran del III millennio a.C., NISABA, vol. 14, Messina 2006 (the latter of archaeological content) most of the other volumes, including the present one, are dedicated to economic and administrative texts. This, along with the recent foundation of the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research on the Economics of the Ancient Near East, testifies to the well-rooted interest of the Chair of Assyriology of the University of Messina in the economic aspects of ancient Mesopotamia.
The volumes published so far in the Nisaba Series contain the editions of texts belonging to collections of various museums, especially the British Museum, but also from the Harvard Semitic Museum, and the Yale Babylonian Collection, as is the case with the present volume. Indeed, in Nisaba 34 more than 1200 economic tablets are published and catalogued, the great majority of which (1179 texts) from the Rosen Babylonian Collection, founded by J. Rosen and now part of the Yale Babylonian Collection, in the Peabody Museum of Natural History of Yale University, New Haven (USA), whereas twenty-five texts belong to Mr. Rosen’s private collection, “Rosen Collection” (texts 1180-1204). All texts are dated to the Neo-Sumeric period (ca. 2110-2003 BCE), and originated from Puzriš-Dagan, Ĝirsu/Lagaš and mainly from Umma.
The publication of such an extraordinary number of previously unpublished texts is an exceptional contribution to a better understanding of the economic and social organization of the Neo-Sumerian period. Among the different types of texts, there are some categories that stand out: records of animals’ transfer, primarily sheep, but also oxen, goats, donkeys, mules, pigs and birds; donations to temples, especially of sheep and other animals for offerings to deities; payments to workers; receipts for food especially barley, beer and flour; records of dead animals (mainly sheep and goats, but also, cows, pigs, donkeys and gazelles); transfers and receipts of garden products, as well as of wood, baskets, reeds, herbs, bitumen, clothes, leather, copper and silver; trade; receipts for wool; messengers’ rations, just to name the most common types.
I feel compelled to express my gratitude to Professor Tohru Ozaki, Professor Marcel Sigrist, and Dr Sergio Tang for agreeing to publish their seminal research in the Nisaba Series; to the Head of the Department of Ancient and Modern Civilizations, Professor Giuseppe Giordano, without whom this book would not have seen the light of day; and finally to Professor Pomponio, who never ceased supporting me, and last but not least to Palmiro Notizia for his remarkable work as Co-Editor of the Series.

Annunziata Rositani,
Messina, September 2023

 
TOHRU OZAKI (1944) received his PhD from the Graduate School of the Rissho University (Tokyo) in 2000. He was a professor at the University of Shizuoka (Japan), retiring in 2009.

MARCEL SIGRIST (1940) studied at the University of Strasbourg 1958-1960 and the École Biblique in Jerusalem 1969-1972. He was a student at Yale (USA) from 1972 to 1976 (PhD in Assyriology) and a professor at the École Biblique (Israel) from l976.

SERGIO TANG (1995) received his BA in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at Yale and finished his MA in 2021.