Bibliographical column 22: “Kültepe Texts” 1990–2010–2020 – Part 1
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Since 1948, the excavations in the lower town of Ancient Kanesh, in Central Anatolia, have brought to light numerous archives of the Old Assyrian traders, dating to the nineteenth century BCE, but it was only in 1990 that they finally started to be published. After a slow start in the years 1990–2006, when five volumes of quite different style, format, and language were released, since 2010 the publication of the archives has gathered pace. Over the last decade, ten more volumes in the Kültepe Tabletleri series, produced by European and Turkish scholars, have been published in Ankara, giving us access to more than two thousand new texts from seven different archives. Their contents are in general, unfortunately, not well known. This is due to the absence of reviews (the Türk Tarih Kurumu does not provide review copies), the fact that several volumes are written in Turkish, and because the texts present hurdles to the reader due to their predominantly commercial content. Moreover, the Old Assyrian script and language are not familiar to the general Assyriologist. They nevertheless merit attention because they are a mine of information on ancient trade, commercial and judicial procedures, administrative and political structures, and social life, all of which bring to life a unique merchant colony in Bronze Age Anatolia and the ancient city of Assur.This article presents the new volumes published after 2010, but it starts with two introductory chapters. Chapter I offers an overview of the “experimental period” of 1990–2006, sketching out the contents and structure of the first volumes, with proposals for improving the text's editions. Chapter II describes the numerous challenges that editors of such volumes face, aside from the basic problem of how to handle and present a large, composite archive that may belong to or deal with several persons, during different periods. It describes the problems that impair the work of the philologist, such the as the separate or delayed publication of the numerous seal impressions, the difficulty of getting envelopes open so as to gain access to the tablets inside, the absence or insufficiency of archaeological data on where the texts were discovered, and the lack of a comprehensive prosopography. It also notes and describes a variety of excellent new philological tools that can help students, among them an impressive new grammar of Old Assyrian and some digital tools.Chapter III presents the new volumes and describes their contents, dealing with the archive owner and his family; his status; his business and commercial contacts; his relationships with his family, investors, and the administration in Assur; and the various issues he faced. These issues were usually the result of conflicts, economic problems, and especially the (not always natural) death of traders, which could lead to conflicts between heirs and involve the City Assembly in Assur. Some of them are presented in more detail, while also included are translations of (parts of) selected texts. These are of particular interest, also beyond the purely commercial issues. In addition, I point out the contributions the texts offer to Old Assyrian lexicography, followed by proposals for corrections to the transliterations and translations of the texts.Lastly, chapter IV deals with a variety of publications that have disseminated groups of texts from still unpublished archives. It also looks ahead to the publishing of additional archives, which may take place in the coming years.
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