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A Foundation-Inscription from Tell al Rimah

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 August 2014

C. B. F. Walker
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Extract

The most interesting epigraphical discovery made in the course of the 1968 season of excavations at Tell al Rimah under the direction of Mr. David Oates was a circular plaque of baked clay, TR.5708, maximum diameter 12·5 cms., found in the Palace area, site C. The plaque was buried in a repaired section of a wall in a building of level 5, the level above that in which Old Babylonian archives had appeared in 1967. The level is tentatively dated by Mr. Oates to about the 16th century B.C., but it was perfectly clear that the plaque was not in its original position. The brick-work at the base of the wall had apparently been eroded by water-action, and the gap had been filled up with a packing of earth, in which was the plaque, and faced by a single row of bricks placed slanting against the wall. The back of the plaque is quite smooth, but two small lumps of libn adhere to it, suggesting that it was originally plastered on to the face of a wall.

The slightly convex face of the plaque is inscribed with a six-line inscription written in a clear Old Babylonian script, of which a copy appears as Fig. 1.

Type
Research Article
Information
IRAQ , Volume 32 , Issue 1 , Spring 1970 , pp. 27 - 30
Copyright
Copyright © The British Institute for the Study of Iraq 1970

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References

1 See above pp. 4–5; Plate III, d.

2 Iraq 30 (1968), 90Google ScholarPubMed. For information on unpublished tablets from the 1967 season I am indebted to Miss Stephanie Page.

3 ARM II 78, 7 & 16Google Scholar; XI 259, 3; Syria 20 (1939), 111Google Scholar.

4 ARM VI 65, 7 & 9Google Scholar. There is also a king Šar-ra-ia of Eluḫut: ARM XIII 144, 40Google Scholar; Syria 41 (1964), 1395Google Scholar.

5 Syria 20 (1939), 109Google ScholarPubMed.

6 ARM VI 42Google Scholar; RA 47 (1953), 173Google Scholar.

7 ARM V 24, 10Google Scholar.

8 RA 49 (1955), 27Google ScholarPubMed.

9 Syria 21 (1940), 162–163Google ScholarPubMed, written PN1 PN2 DUMU-su; the third text published there has the pattern ‘PN2 son of PN1’.

10 Syria 21 (1940), 165Google Scholar and AfO 3 (1926), 112–113Google Scholar written PN1 PN2 DUMU-šu.

11 OIP XLIII 145Google Scholar, Seal Legend No. 12; see also Jacobscn's restoration of the date formula No. 72, op. cit., 180, which produces the form DUMU.MÎ.NI-šu.

12 von Soden, W., ZA 41 (1933), 94Google Scholar.

13 JCS 7 (1953), 65–67Google Scholar.

14 Oates, D., Studies in the Ancient History of Northern Iraq, 35 n.3; 55 n.1Google Scholar.

15 ARM II 78, 8Google Scholar; VI 65, 6–8; IX 149, 9–10; Syria 20 (1939), 109 and 111Google Scholar.

16 ARM VI 51, 52, 54 and 65Google Scholar.

17 ARM II 39, 43 and 50Google Scholar.

18 ARM I 109, 8Google Scholar; V 67, 30. On this point I follow Goetze's, argument in JCS 7 (1953), 66–67Google Scholar and dissent from Oates' identification (op. cit., 39–40) of the Assyrian administrative centre with the later independent principality of Šarraya.

19 There remain a number of references which cannot be distributed with certainty to either of these two Razamās: ARM IV 68, 25Google Scholar; VII 104, 167, 219, 260.

20 TR.4035, a letter from Napsuna-Addu to Iltani, too damaged to be informative.