Sargonic and Presargonic Texts in The World Museum Liverpool 9781407306766, 9781407336763

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BAR S2135 2010 CRIPPS SARGONIC AND PRESARGONIC TEXTS IN THE WORLD MUSEUM LIVERPOOL

B A R

Sargonic and Presargonic Texts in The World Museum Liverpool Eric L. Cripps

BAR International Series 2135 2010

Sargonic and Presargonic Texts in The World Museum Liverpool Eric L. Cripps

BAR International Series 2135 2010

ISBN 9781407306766 paperback ISBN 9781407336763 e-format DOI https://doi.org/10.30861/9781407306766 A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

BAR

PUBLISHING

dumu-dumu-gÅu10 For my children and grandchildren

CONTENTS Page Preface and acknowledgements ....................................................................................................................................... 2 Abbreviations .................................................................................................................................................................. 4 Chapter 1.

Chapter 2.

Chapter 3.

The modern history of the Sargonic texts in the WML ...................................................................... 6

Hon. Arnold Keppel and the Norwich Museum. A first incomplete and unpublished edition. First publications of the WML Old Akkadian tablets. Figure 1 Î Arnold Keppel's letter to the Norwich Museum. More recent publications of the WML tablets. Three Old Akkadian letters. Land and the ficompleted court case(s)‹. Earlier publications of some WML Sargonic tablets. The WML collection and the CDLI.

Sargonic history: a perspective from the Liverpool cuneiform texts. ............................................... 10

The historical time frame. Table 1 Î A chronology of the Old Akkadian kings and city governors. A brief political history. Aspects of the late Sargonic land economy in Sumer. Agriculture and the harvest. Rations, bread and beer and the Akkadian army in Umma. The corve¿e and conscription. Other food disbursements. At the temple gate. The Sargonic legal system and a court record. An Old Akkadian gift. Conclusion.

Sargonic and Presargonic texts in the World Museum Liverpool ..................................................... 27

Autographs, Transliterations, Translations Î a new edition. A note on the metrology of the texts.

Concordance with Museum Accession Numbers...................................................................................... 29 Texts 1Î49 ................................................................................................................................................. 30 Indexes ...................................................................................................................................................... 130

Personal Names Professions and occupations Place Names Names of Deities

Bibliography .................................................................................................................................................................... 135

1

PREFACE

The completion of my PhD and concurrent staff changes at the World Museum have enabled me to make new copies of these tablets and finally to produce this new edition of them.

This study of the Old Akkadian tablets in the collection of the World Museum Liverpool (WML) began as an adjunct to my doctoral studies in the Department of Archaeology at the University of Liverpool. These clay tablets, which were readily accessible from the University in the (then) Liverpool Museum store, were my introduction to third millennium cuneiform.

In this edition, an attempt is made to provide a localizing historical context for the texts. I judged that a new edition, limited to copies, transliterations, translations and indexes would be somewhat sterile and would undervalue this small but significant collection of cuneiform tablets. The texts merited interpretation in the contexts of both the much larger corpus of Sargonic texts of which they are members and the wider history of the Old Akkadian period.

Early on in my studies, I discovered the CDLI website and found that the CDLI database contained catalogue summaries only of the Liverpool Sargonic tablets Î no images and very few transliterations, inadequate museum numbers and so on. The CDLI catalogue was primarily based on MCS 9 which comprised copies of the tablets published in 1964 by Trevor Donald of Manchester University. The mimeographed form of Donald's images meant they limited adequate reproduction somewhat. I considered it a worthwhile aim to make either scanned images or new autographs of the tablets and improved catalogue information available to the CDLI, and thus to the wider community of scholars and students of Assyriology and Sumerology.

To these ends, this presentation comprises three sections or chapters. Chapter 1 recounts the modern history of the tablets. It deals with the acquisition of the tablets in the early twentieth century and surveys scholarly treatments of the texts following their first publication in the 1950s and 1960s. Chapter 2 fixes the chronological position of the texts within the context of the history of the Old Akkadian period and offers some interpretations of their historical context from the perspective of the information contained in them. The second chapter does not pretend to provide a comprehensive history of the Sargonic era, merely a restricted perspective. Much fuller treatments should also be consulted in the writings of Foster, Westenholz, Liverani and others.

The exigencies of my doctoral thesis and ever increasing sparsity of the Museum's staff resources to enable and monitor my access to the store moved this aim to a back burner.

Acknowledgements

As my wider studies progressed so did my awareness of the many references to the texts of MCS 9, of the detailed treatments and editions of several of them by various scholars, which enhanced my recognition of the significance of a number of them. The analysis and interpretations of scholars, which had followed Donald's original publication, also suggested a need to integrate their findings with new copies (Donald's publication was after all difficult to reproduce) and any new interpretations.

I owe my interest in these tablets to Alan Millard, Rankin Professor Emeritus and Senior Research Fellow in the School of Archaeology, Classics and Egyptology (SACE) of the University of Liverpool. Alan supervised my doctoral studies and I am eternally grateful to him for his ready encouragement of my senescent efforts in the field of Sumerology and Assyriology. Indeed he facilitated my initial work on these tablets through the then Curator of Egyptian and Near Eastern Antiquities at Liverpool Museum, Dr. Piotr Bienkowski.

A new fully catalogued edition of the tablets has also been desirable from the point of view of the WML. The descriptions of the tablets in the museum's database remain those given in a first unpublished catalogue produced by C.H.W. Johns in 1912 when they belonged to the Castle Museum in Norwich and little more is available about them in the museum's records. Not even the knowledge we now have of the provenance of most of the tablets, which is contrary to that understood by Johns, is part of the museum record. Ever since the assignment of accession numbers to most of them when the Liverpool Museum bought them from Norwich, they have lain in their boxes, disturbed only by a relatively few and now distant visits by scholars Î mainly Professors Benjamin Foster and Aage Westenholz. The latter also had them photographed for his own research purposes not long after Donald's publication.

In addition to Piotr, I owe many thanks to all of the staff who worked at the Museum's off-site store during my visits there over the years and especially Julia McLoughlin to name but one from several who looked after me. My greatest debt, however, is to Dr. Ashley Cooke, the present Head of Antiquities and Curator of Egyptian and Near Eastern Antiquities at what is now named the World Museum, one of the eight museums that form National Museums Liverpool. Ashley has made the tablets available to me in his own quarters at the Museum, where I have been able to work on a regular basis over the last couple of years to produce new copies of them. He has also provided me with scanned images of the tablets with which to compare my copies and collations. I am also most grateful to him for his permission to publish my 2

copies of the tablets and I hope that the new edition adequately satisfies his need for more information about the collection of cuneiform in his care.

Phil Watson, Head of Collections Management at the Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery graciously supplied me with his draft paper and preliminary copies of the unpublished Old Akkadian tablets in the Birmingham cuneiform collection. These had formerly belonged to the collection of the Wellcome Trust and a number of them are from Umma and the same archives as the WML tablets. They have enabled some useful comparisons to be made here.

I am also indebted to him and to the WML for the photograph of the Old Akkadian tablet 56.22.240, which appears on the cover of this book. I have been highly privileged to receive the comments, suggestions and forensic corrections of Professors Benjamin Foster and Aage Westenholz, both of whom read my manuscript on behalf of my publisher. The time and effort they freely gave is greatly appreciated. I have, as far as possible, corrected and improved my text in accordance with their recommendations for which I am truly grateful. Any errors and omissions which remain are all my own.

I wish to express my gratitude to the School of Archaeology, Classics and Egyptology of the University of Liverpool for my membership as an Honorary Research Fellow. Without the degree of access to the University library and electronic resources afforded by such membership, the research required to produce this publication would have proved impossible.

I am also much obligated to Emmanuelle Salgues of Yale University, who generously provided me with a copy of her forthcoming paper on two of Naram-Sin's campaigns, valuably dating the Mesag Archive.

Finally, I am indebted to Dr. David Davison for agreeing to publish this edition. Eric Cripps School of Archaeology, Classics and Egyptology (SACE) The University of Liverpool May 2010

3

ABBREVIATIONS IN TEXT AND BIBLIOGRAPHY

ITT

Annn-1982 tablets in the collection of Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery

JANES Journal of the Ancient Near Eastern Society JNES

Journal of Near Eastern Studies

AAS

J.-P. Gre¿goire, Archives Administratives Sume¿riennes (Paris 1970)

JCS

Journal of Cuneiform Studies

AHw

W. von Soden, Akkadisches HandwoÄrterbuch (Wiesbaden 1959Ñ1981)

Inventaire des Tablettes de Telloh

JESHO Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient MAD

I. J. Gelb, Materials for the Assyrian Dictionary (Chicago 1952Ñ1970)

MC

Mesopotamian Civilisations (Winona Lake, Indiana)

AOAT Alter Orient und Altes Testament

MCS

Manchester Cuneiform Studies (Manchester 1951 ff.)

AoF

Altorientalische Forschungen

MVN

AuOr

Aula Orientalis (Barcelona)

Materiali per il vocabulario neosumerico (Rome 1971 ff.)

Nik

M.V. Nikol'skij, Drevnosti Vostocnyja, III/2 (St. Petersburg 1908) (= Nik 1), (Moscow 1915) (= Nik 2) Dokumenty...iz sobraniia N.P. Likhacheva

OSP 2

A. Westenholz, Old Sumerian and Old Akkadian texts in Philadelphia. Part Two (Copenhagen 1987)

Or

Orientalia (NS)

RA

Revue d'Assyriologie

RAI

Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale

Amherst T.G. Pinches, The Amherst Tablets AnOr

Analecta Orientalia

Banca d'Italia Pomponio F. et al., Le tavolette ... delle collezioni della Banca d'Italia (Rome 2006) BAR

British Archaeological Reports (Oxford)

Berens T.G. Pinches, The Babylonian Tablets of the Berens Collection BIN

Babylonian inscriptions in the collection of James B. Nies (New Haven 1917 ff.)

BRM

Babylonian Records in the Library of J. Pierpont Morgan (New Haven 1917 ff.)

RBS

Tablets in the Rosen Babylonian Collection (Yale University)

BSA

Bulletin of Sumerian Agriculture (Cambridge 1984ff.)

RIME

CAD

The Assyrian Dictionary of the University of Chicago (Chicago 1956 ff.)

Royal Inscriptions of Mesopotamia: Early Periods (Toronto 1990 ff.)

RlA

CDLI

Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative http://cdli.ucla.edu/ and http://cdli.mpiwgberlin.mpg.de/

Reallexikon der Assyriologie und vorderasiatischen ArchaÄologie

RSO

Rivista degli Studi Orientali

CST

T. Fish, Catalogue of Sumerian Tablets in the John Rylands Library (Manchester 1932)

SBL

Society of Biblical Literature

SEL

CT

Cuneiform texts from the Babylonian Tablets in the British Museum (London 1896 ff.)

Studi Epigrafici e Linguistici sul Vicino Oriente Antico

SKL

Sumerian King List

SR

D. O. Ezard, Sumerische Rechtsurkunden des III Jahrtausends aus der Zeit vor der III Dynastie von Ur (Munich 1968)

CUSAS Cornell Studies in Assyriology and Sumerology (Bethesda 2007 ff.) DCS

D. Charpin/J-M. Durand, Documents cune¿iformes de Strasbourg (Paris 1981)

StrKT

ePSD

electronic Pennsylvania Sumerian Dictionary http://psd.museum.upenn.edu/epsd/

C. Frank, Stra§burger Keilschriftexte (Berlin/Leipzig 1928)

USP

B. Foster, Umma in the Sargonic Period (Hamden, Connecticut 1982)

VS

Vorderasiatische SchriftdenkmaÄler der (KoÄniglichen) Museen zu Berlin (Berlin 1907 ff.)

VN

V. K. SÏileijko, Votivnyja nadpisi sumerijskih pravitelej (St. Petersburg 1915)

ETCSL Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature http://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/ FAOS

Freiburger Altorientalische Studien (Freiburg 1975 ff.)

4

WML

World Museum Liverpool

YOS

Yale Oriental Series, Babylonian Texts (New Haven 1915 ff.)

ZA

Zeitschrift fuÄr Assyriologie und vorderasiatische ArchaÄologie

5

A first incomplete and unpublished edition

1 THE MODERN HISTORY OF THE SARGONIC TEXTS IN THE WML

Soon after Keppel's acquisition of them in May 1911, the texts appear to have been in the keeping of the Castle Museum, Norwich, almost a year before they were formally donated to the museum by him. However, they may have passed temporarily into the possession of Francis Llewellyn Griffiths, the Oxford Egyptologist, who in a June 1911 letter to Mr F. (Frank) Leney, the Curator of the Castle Museum, Norwich, requested that his brother-in-law, C.H.W. Johns, the Assyriologist and Master of St. Catharine's Cambridge, be allowed to look at the tablets, to list them and any others at the Norwich Museum. This Johns would do when he left Cambridge in the summer for Norwich where he was a Canon of the Cathedral. Because Johns could not leave Cambridge for some time, Griffiths says he would send the tablets to his brother-in-law in Cambridge where he would keep them safely in the meanwhile. We may surmise Budge had perhaps influenced Keppel to ask Griffiths to interest Johns in them and that Griffiths had intercepted them before their dispatch to Norwich, unless as was eminently possible Budge acted without Keppel. The tablets may therefore have been promised to the Norwich Museum a year earlier than Keppel's letter formally gifting them.

The modern history of the majority of these tablets has been discussed by Foster (1982a:6Î7,79,146), who suggests that his Group C archive of the mu-iti texts of which thirty of the Liverpool texts are members, arrived on the antiquities market when the ruins of the e¿-gÅidru at Umma (Tell Jokha) were plundered in 1911. Twentyeight of the mu-iti tablets in the WML were acquired by the Hon. Arnold Keppel. Text 37 (unnumbered) was acquired from a different collection and was known to Foster. I have discovered one other in the museum store also unnumbered and uncatalogued and which is published here as Text 40. Foster proposed that five other tablets purchased by Keppel, were from Umma, possibly the e¿-gÅidru, even though they are undated. A further nine from Keppel's acquisition are studied here, but were not part of Foster's considerations and their provenance is less certain. Forty-two of the forty-nine texts in this edition are therefore from Keppel's collection via the Norwich Museum. The origins of the remaining seven texts are discussed below.

Johns identified them as from the time fiof the Dynasty of Agade‹ comparing them with recent findings of ThureauDangin from his study of four similar tablets in the Louvre. He listed and catalogued forty-four tablets (only forty-one were from the Old Akkadian period) in the Norwich collection and copied and transliterated them as far as he could. The Norwich Museum labels still attached to each tablet from the Keppel donation are from Johns' descriptions and the only cataloguing of the tablets at the World Museum Liverpool remains based on those descriptions. Johns' draft notes and copies are in the WML archive and are entitled fiCollection of archaic (cuneiform) tablets from Telloh, Mesopotamia‹. His notes are dated August 1912. Johns also records that later tablets in the Norwich/Keppel collection are probably from the Ur III period. The collection was purchased by the Liverpool Museum (now The World Museum Liverpool) in 1956 to help replace its own cuneiform collection, much depleted in the bombing of the Second World War.

Hon. Arnold Keppel and the Norwich Museum The Hon. Arnold Keppel gave his collection of cuneiform tablets to the Norwich Museum in 1912 according to a letter in his hand and dated May 1st 1912. The letter (Figure 1) is now in the archive of the World Museum Liverpool. The collection he gave to the Norwich Museum also contained several Ur III tablets. Keppel had acquired them a year before in May 1911 from an Arab in Bussorah (Basra) and states that they had been excavated from fiTell-loh‹, though it is now certain that not many, if any, of Keppel's tablets discussed here originate from Girsu. In 1911, Arnold Joost William Keppel, the second son of the eighth Earl of Albermarle, was twenty-seven years of age and held the British Foreign Service post of honorary attache¿ in H.M. Legations in Bucharest and Teheran. In the same year he went as The Times special correspondent with the expedition to the Persian Makran and it is possible that during these travels he journeyed back up along the Gulf and crossed into Mesopotamia where he acquired the tablets. On his return to England he showed them to fiProfessor Budge‹ (E. A. Wallis Budge) at the British Museum. Budge confirmed their antiquity but may not have been aware of the period to which they belonged. Keppel was the correspondent of The Times in Teheran in 1912Î14.1 His letter to the Norwich Museum is probably referring to the travels he would have expected to make for The Times as the reason for his gift of the tablets.

The principal publication of the WML Old Akkadian tablets In 1964 Thomas Fish, Professor of Mesopotamian Studies, and his student Trevor Donald2 privately published from the University of Manchester mimeographed copies of most of the Old Akkadian tablets in the Liverpool Museum (now WML), which had not yet been published. This edition was known as MCS When Fish retired, Donald continued for a number of years to teach Akkadian at Manchester University but eventually gave this up to teach in a Manchester secondary school.

2

Cf. Burke's Peerage 1975 (ed. Townend): entry under Earl of Albermarle. 1

6

Figure 1 Arnold Keppel's letter to Norwich Museum

More recent publications of the WML tablets

9 and was Part One only. It comprised copies made by Donald of forty-three cuneiform tablets from the Sargonic period, held in the museum. Donald thought that the Liverpool tablet collection certainly dated from the late Sargonic or Gutian periods. Nowadays, we know that most of them are from the time of SÏarkalisûarri, although one is possibly from the fitime of confusion‹ immediately following his reign but not the Gutian period proper unless we count the three years encompassing the reigns of Irgigi, Nanum and Imi before Dudu as Gutian.3 Thus, Donald's dates were broadly accurate as were his copies of the cuneiform, though his copies do not realistically represent the shape and palaeography of or the damage to the tablets.

The twenty-eight mu-iti tablets in the WML, which were known to him, are treated at some length in his Umma in the Sargonic Period (USP) by Foster. As already noted these tablets provide a substantial and characteristic component of the later Umma archive. Even though none of the tablets was excavated by systematic or professional archaeology, their Umma provenance is firmly established by Foster (1982a:2) from the onomasticon of the texts and the frequent mention of other towns in the Umma region but above all because fiUmma, especially the of Umma is frequently mentioned as the locus of transactions in texts with mu-iti dates‹. Two of the WML tablets (Texts 9 and 40) contain this information. Text 45 names Umma as the origin of a shipment of supplies for a building project and Umma can, on one interpretation, be restored in text 41 as part of the subscription to an account of supplies for SÏarkalisûarri's table on the occasion of his visit there in his coronation year. e¿-gÅidru

By the standards of present day technology, his duplicated reproductions limit further reproduction and access to them. Nevertheless, at the time, they were widely distributed to university libraries and became an important source of reference (MCS 9) in the Assyriological literature. Donald had planned that a later issue of the Manchester Cuneiform Studies would contain full indices and a catalogue. However, MCS 9 part 1 was the last volume of MCS to be produced and the information never materialised.

Foster's seminal work on the Umma tablets centres on the construction of a history of Sargonic Umma from the analysis and categorisation of the content of tablets in the mu-iti corpus, with only representative or where appropriate explicative transliterations or translations of some of the texts. For example, Foster did not need to transliterate any of the bread and beer texts in the whole corpus but by distinguishing their formulary, classifying

Hallo (2005:153) suggests that the Gutian Interregnum can only be accommodated between the death of SÏarkalisûarri and the accession of Ur-Nammu of Ur, a period of about forty years.

3

7

(Wilcke 2003:38 fn. 75) and he now follows Kienast and Volk in their use of the name.5

types of bread and beer, excerpting titles and other attributes of recipients was able to interpret their role in the scheme of rations to persons levied for the corve¿e. Fourteen of the WML tablets are bread and beer texts.

All three of these letters have more recently appeared in two collected editions (transliterations and translations) of letters from ancient Mesopotamia. The first is that of Michalowski (1993) and the second is by Kienast and Volk (1995). There are some differences of detail between the two editions in both the transliteration and translation of parts of these texts and such variations are discussed in my own treatment of the texts below. There is a significant difference between them with regard to the proposals and inferences they make concerning the probable historical origin and locus of the two mu-iti dated letters.

Again by way of example, Foster (1982b) transliterates only half of the WML texts which refer to land. On the other hand, he transliterates in full both of the Old Akkadian letters in the collection, which have mu-iti dates. My cataloguing of the texts below provides a concordance with any transliterations, full or partial, by Foster and others but clearly not with brief excerpts of names and titles. Foster's (1982c) study of ethnicity and onomastics in this period relies on the personal names found on the mu-iti tablets and its index of personal names augments his analysis in USP. I have retained most of Foster's interpretations in my transliteration of Sumerian and Akkadian names.

Michalowski (1993:42) agrees with Steinkeller's (Steinkeller and Postgate 1992:8) assertion that the Mesag Archive may have formed part of the central archive of Umma and that Mesag, the high dignitary who is associated with the Archive, was also the e¿nsi of Umma (Steinkeller ibid. fn. 36). Michalowski therefore assumes that the two letters addressed to Mesag (cf. texts 36 and 37) are from the so-called Mesag Archive. Foster (1993b:444) demonstrates the improbability of the same location for the Mesag Archive and the Umma central archive and also recounts the history of failed attempts to show that Mesag, fithe high dignitary‹ of the Akkadian governing apparatus is the same person as the e¿nsi of Umma, even though they may have been contemporaries.6 Westenholz (1984:78Î80) argues persuasively that the two dated letters are file copies from the central Umma archive and the fact that they were written in Akkadian by Akkadian officials, one of them an inferior to the e¿nsi, may distinguish the role of the Imperial hierarchy vis-a`-vis the local governor. The archival or file copy status of the letters is supported by the Sumerian subscript to one of the letters7 (Westenholz ibid: 80).

Foster's work, though comprehensive in its treatment of the mu-iti corpus, saving a few Sargonic tablets which have come to light since his publication,4 does not address all of the Old Akkadian texts in this collection.

Three Old Akkadian letters One of the mu-iti dated letters transliterated by Foster was from the acquisition by Keppel (text 36 = MCS 9 251); the other (text 37) was from the Nelson collection, a few items from the sale of which had already been acquired by the Liverpool Museum before the purchase of the Keppel tablets from Norwich in 1956. The latter was first published by Fish as MCS 4 p. 13. no. 3. Fish's copy has been superseded by Westenholz's exemplary autograph (1984:79). Donald's copy of the enigmatic fiIrgigi‹ letter of unknown provenance (MCS 9 252 = text 39) has been studied and variously transliterated and translated by several scholars. Foster's (1977:41) transliteration and translation misconstrued the letter as referring to commercial activity. Wilcke (1977:185Î6) largely corrected Foster's misinterpretation, though he misunderstood the PN Irgigi as fito the place to which and translated 4 4 slaves return‹. He has since reversed his misinterpretation

Similarly, Kienast and Volk (1995:129Î33, Um 2 and 3) tentatively favour the central archive of Umma and that the addressee of the two Akkadian tablets is Mesag, the governor. They also suggest Umma as a possible source for the fiIrgigi‹ letter (Um 3 = text 39) on the grounds that all of the other texts in the WML Sargonic collection come from Umma, fitrotz prosoprographischer Unsicherheiten‹. We have noted that it is doubtful that all of the tablets from the Keppel collection do have a provenance in Umma, and others in the WML collection certainly do not. I return to the issue of the origins of the Irgigi letter in the next chapter.

ki i`r-gi -gi -sûe

E.g. my text 40 and MC 4 23Î25 and 27Î31, and cf. Steinkeller (Steinkeller and Postgate: 8). See also Banca d'Italia 2/1, 49 which can be assigned to Foster's later mu-iti archive. A further fifteen tablets with mu-iti dates, part of a group of unpublished Old Akkadian texts now in the collection of the Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery were acquired from the Wellcome Trust. Their Birmingham catalogue numbers are consecutively A486-1982ÑA499-1982 plus A510-1982. On the basis of the dating sysem, onomasticon, metrology and palaeography, these tablets can also be assigned to Foster's later Umma archive C (P. Watson personal communication).

4

See also Westenholz (1999:57 fn. 220) for the possible etymology of the name.

5

8

6

But see below in Chapter 2.

7

cf. Text 36.

well drawn, however, and more obviously merits new copies.

Land and the ficompleted court case(s)‹ Several of the WML texts, previously copied by Donald, also featured in Foster's Administration and Use of Institutional Land in Sargonic Sumer. There he transliterated texts 5 = MCS 9 272, 6 = MCS 9 276 and 7 = MCS 9 231, the first two of which he assigned a possible Umma provenance. The third remains of unknown origin.

According to Fish, these tablets were acquired from the collection of Dr. Philip Nelson, an eminent Liverpool antiquarian and apparently prior to his death in 1953. With the exception of text 37, which is unnumbered, their accession date at the museum is 1951. A considerable variety of objects Î glass, porcelain, garments etc. Î had been earmarked, at the posthumous disposal of his collection for sale to the Museum in Liverpool after the probate of his will, but the accession date of these tablets suggests an earlier acquisition from him.

Edzard (1968:134) transliterates and translates MCS 9 250 = text 46, a singular Sumerian record from the Old Akkadian period in which the Sumerogram di-til-la ficompleted court case‹ occurs. Like other tablets from the Keppel collection it is of unknown provenance.

The WML collection and the CDLI

Earlier publications of some WML Sargonic tablets

In the spring of 2010, coincident with my completion of this edition of the Old Akkadian tablets, the whole, or nearly so, of the cuneiform collection of the World Museum Liverpool was digitised for the CDLI by Ludek Vacin, a postdoctoral associate of the Max Plank Institute for the History of Science, Berlin. His digital images of the WML tablets are also now accessible via the CDLI site. My copies have been integrated with the appropriate Old Akkadian records on the system.

The earliest publication of one of the Old Akkadian texts now in the Liverpool collection was by T.G. Pinches (1908:21 = Text 31). The cuneiform tablet is from the dispersed Amherst collection. Pinches (1908: Preface v) thought that all of the tablets in his edition fito all appearance came exclusively from fiTel-loh‹. Consequently, most Assyriologists have probably assumed that the texts from The Amherst Tablets are from Girsu (see for example the CDLI catalogue), though its provenance is at least ambivalent. For the most part Lord Amherst's collections were acquired via the antiquities market advised and facilitated by Pinches. Both Pinches and Budge, keepers at the British Museum at that time, were active in the antiquities market both in a public and private capacity. Pinches seems to have had a long and particular collaboration with Amherst (Finkel 1996). It is possible that this tablet was in one of the boxes of tablets acquired via his estate from W.T Burbush of Castle Bromwich in October 1898. One lot of the tablets so acquired by Amherst is purported to have come from Telloh (Finkel 1996:193, fn. 11). But then it was often claimed that many tablets bought on the antiquities market at that time had originated from the recent finds at Telloh, if only because such tablets were originally offered by local Mesopotamian traders as having been excavated at Telloh. That was certainly the case with the Old Akkadian tablets which Keppel bought and which comprise the majority of the texts in the Liverpool collection. As we have seen, however, it is far more probable that the majority of those were fiunburied‹, to use Keppel's expression, from Tell Jokha. As well as his publication of the Old Akkadian letter (text 37 = MCS 4 p. 13 no. 3), Fish published two other WML Old Akkadian tablets (text 15 = MCS 4 p.14 no.4, text 38 = MCS 4 p.12 no. 2) and one tablet from ED IIIb Girsu (text 49 = MCS 4 p.12 no. 1). MCS 4 was published using a similar method of reproduction to Donald's MCS 9 some ten years earlier in 1954. The cuneiform is less 9

2 SARGONIC HISTORY: A PERSPECTIVE FROM THE LIVERPOOL CUNEIFORM TEXTS

the Old Akkadian period. Text 49 is from the earlier ED IIIb and is dated to the seventh year of Uruinimgina's reign as king of Lagasû. Thirty of the Sargonic tablets are definitely from Umma as they are dated with the mu-iti formulary and belong to Foster's archive C, the greater part of which was contemporary with the e¿nsi Mesag and thus with SÏarkalisûarri, King of Agade.

The historical time frame Chapter 1 noted that forty-eight of the forty-nine texts in the WML which may be dated to before Ur III, are from

Table 1. A chronology of the Old Akkadian Kings and city governors Agade

Lagasû

Sargon (2296Î2240)

Umma

Mes-zi

Rimusû (2239Î2230)

Lugalzagesi

Ennanum

Kitusû-id

LAMxKUR.RU.BI

Manisûtusu (2229Î2214)

Pap-SÏesû Surusû-kin

Naram-Sin (2213Î2176)

Lu-Utu Enannatum SÏ U.DUÑÑÑÎ Mesag Lu-SÏara

Ur-e Lugal-usûumgal

SÏarkalis¨arri (2175Î2150)

ni-ili

Puzur-Mama

Irgigi Nanum Imi Elulu Dudu (2147Î2126) SÏu-Durul (2125Î2111)

Ur-Utu Ur-Mama Lu-Ba