“A Hurrian Administrative Tablet from Third Millennium Urkesh,”
Zeitschrift für Assyriologie 101, pp. 191-203.
See full text (preprint)
A small Hurrian tablet found in 1997 at Tell Mozan (from unit A7, locus 21, feature 225 [for a list of the finds from this unit, see A7 items]) is fully published in this paper. The tablet, labelled as A7.341, is well preserved and can be dated (sections 1-2) to the third millennium BC (on the base of both palaeography and stratigraphy).
Subparagraph 2.1 presents a palaeographical comparison with other documents from Southern Mesopotamia and with two other tablets found at Urkesh (M2 1 and M2 2, for which see Milano 1991 = Mozan 2) found in Area F of the High Mound.
Sub-sub-sections 2.1.1, 2.1.2 and 2.1.3 deals with the description of the stylus used to write the inscription, the sign alignment, and the analysis of some noteworthy signs, respectively.
Sub-section 2.2 describes physical characteristics of the tablet (comparing it with the LU E school tablet published in Buccellati 2003, while sub-section 2.3 offers a copy, a transliteration, a translation and a comment of the text which reports transactions of sheep (on the obverse) and of copper daggers (on the reverse), probably in connection to field taxation.
Section 3 underlines the historical significance of this text, both for what concerns the format and the content: 1) the tablet was probably read in Hurrian; 2) the uniqueness of the text, related to administrative record; 3) the “impression of a culturally flourishing scribal environment” (p. 10); 4) the existence of close contacts between the Hurrian and the Akkadian worlds.
A final remark of the author deserves to be quoted verbatim: “How this process of cultural contact [between Hurrians and Akkadians] evolved through time, eventually leading to major historical changes on a larger scale, is a matter for future studies, informed by future discoveries” (p. 11).
[M. De Pietri – November 2019]