The Old Babylonian administrative texts in the Hilprecht Collection Jena

More about the book

During the Old Babylonian period (ca. 1900–1700 BC), Nippur, the religious capital of Babylonia, was a center of cultural and economic activities. Excavations have yielded, beside numerous literary compositions, a variety of documents concerning urban and temple administration as well as economic activities and property management of the priestly families. The book contains the publication of the legal and administrative documents from Old Babylonian Nippur kept in the Hilprecht Collection, Jena. The edition provides transliterations, translations, commentaries, hand copies, and photographs (on CD-ROM) of all texts. The indexes comprise personal names, toponyms, professions, deities, year-names, and a glossary. A separate chapter by Ursula Seidl discusses the iconography of seal impressions on the tablets. The legal documents are keystones of the family archives excavated by the Babylonian Expedition. The book also includes a discussion of the activities related in these archives and of the families who kept them. The administrative documents predominantly belong to a single archive and are characterized by an unusual dating system. The archive keeps track of sections of the management of the city and its temples.