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A Clay Tablet with Greek Letters in the Ashmolean Museum, and the ”Graeco-Babyloniaca” Texts*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 August 2014

J. A. Black  and
S. M. Sherwin-White
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Extract

Ashmolean Museum inv. 1937. 993. Photo: P. R. S. Moorey, Ancient Iraq (Assyria and Babylonia) (Oxford, 1976) 47, plate XXX (reverse only). Cf. Plate IX (enlarged). An originally unbaked clay tablet: W., 8·2 cm, h., 6 cm, th., 1·4 cm (maximum).

The tablet was in the possession of Stephen Langdon and came to the Ashmolean as part of Langdon's bequest. No Kish excavation inventory number is scratched on the edges as on material from Kish. There is no reason therefore to assume Kish as the provenance. No exact provenance is in fact available for the tablet. The tablet is inscribed in Greek script on both sides. It was referred to but not published by Sollberger in his important collection of the fourteen known fragments of Babylonian texts in the Greek alphabet, the “Graeco-Babyloniaca” texts. To this collection can now be added the Harvard tablet, which contains part of an incantation inscribed in cuneiform on the obverse and Greek script on the reverse.

The Ashmolean tablet differs physically from these in two respects, (a) Size. It is considerably smaller in all dimensions than the other tablets in the British Museum with Greek script which Pinches estimated to have been about 5 in wide by 9 in high when complete. Their thickness is also greater at 2–3 cm. (b) Oblong shape. Apart from tiny chips the other fragments (including the Harvard text) are from tablets which had the usual shape of Babylonian tablets, height greater than breadth. It is like the other tablets in being unbaked. The size and shape of the Ashmolean tablet are, however, typical for Seleucid period cuneiform business documents.

Type
Research Article
Information
IRAQ , Volume 46 , Issue 2 , Autumn 1984 , pp. 131 - 140
Copyright
Copyright © The British Institute for the Study of Iraq 1984

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Footnotes

*

Parts I and III are principally the work of S. M. Sherwin-White and Part II of J. A. Black, but all points have been discussed between the authors. We wish to express gratitude to the Visitors of the Ashmolean Museum for granting permission to publish this object, and to Dr. P. R. S. Moorey for his help. Thanks are owed also to Dr. M. Geller and to Dr. I. Finkel for discussion. Dr. Finkel of the Department of Western Asiatic Antiquities also kindly arranged access to the “Graeco-Babyloniaca” texts in the British Museum. Dr. E. Sollberger was kind enough to show us a copy and partial transliteration made by him a number of years ago. In the absence of evidence to the contrary, we have worked on the proposition that this tablet is genuine, records a coherent text—not scribal practice—and comes from Babylonia.

References

1 Iraq 24 (1962), 63–72 at 72Google Scholar. For T. G. Pinches' recognition of, and pioneer work on, this group of tablets see idem, PSBA 1902, 108–119. See also A. H. Sayce, ibid., 120–125; F. C. Burkitt, ibid. 143–145. The Harvard tablet is published by Geller, M. in ZA 73 (1983), 114–120Google Scholar. Two small corrections can be made to the reading of the reverse of B 2 (BM 34816) in Iraq 24 (1962), 69Google Scholar; rev. 3 a, the letter is ω not ΟΝ; rev. 4, there is no room for, or sign of, Υ after Ο and before Ρ.

2 On the dimensions of the BM fragments see Pinches, op. cit., 109. For the shape of Seleucid business documents see the remarks of Doty, L. T., Cuneiform Archives from Hellenistic Uruk (University Microfilms International; Michigan, 1981), 50Google Scholar, “The most striking feature of the archival texts from Seleucid Uruk is their homogeneity, both in form and content. With very few exceptions the tablets are large and rectangular, ranging in length from 8 to 13 cm and in width from 6 to 10 cm. They are inscribed parallel to the long axis on both sides with a fine but easily readable cursive script.”

3 Pinches, ibid.

4 See the article cited in n. 40 on third century B.C. Greek epigraphic material from the Seleucid eastern satrapies.

5 E.g. Cumont, F., CRAI 1932, 278 no. 3Google Scholar (dated s.E. 171 = 142/1 B.C.), with facsimile; ibid., 279 no. 4 (dated S.E. 181 = 131/0 B.C.), with facsimile.

6 For Susa see, e.g. Cumont, , CRAI 1931, 241Google Scholar (dated S.E. 313 = A.D. 1/2), with facsimile; idem, CRAI 1933, 264 no. 2 (“probably first half of first B.C.”) with facsimile. For Dura see Johnson, J., Excavations at Dura-Europos. Preliminary Report of Second Season of Work October 1928–April 1929, ed. Bauer, P. V. C. and Rostovtzeff, M. I. (Yale: Oxford, 1931), 114 ffGoogle Scholar.

7 Pinches, op. cit., 116–117 (=SP II 291 + SP III 311 (34798) = Sollberger B1: photo and facsimile); cf. Sayce, op. cit., 123. See Van der Meer, P. E., AfO 13 (1939–1941), 124 ff.Google Scholar, for this as the beginning of the “Description of Babylon.”

8 Sayce, op. cit., 120, citing Reisner, , Sumerisch-babylonische Hymnen nach Thontafeln griechischer Zeit (Berlin, 1896), XI, XIVGoogle Scholar.

9 Sayce, ibid.

10 For the cursive hand see Pinches, op. cit., 110–116, plate II (SP II 290 + SP III 247 (34797) = Sollberger A 2).

11 see n. 3 above.

12 loc. cit.

13 AfO 5 (1928–1929), 11–13 and pl. 8Google Scholar.

14 see n. 1 above.

15 There is ample evidence that Greek speakers preserved a lively distinction between aspirated (θχϕ) and unaspirated (τκπ) consonants until a late date. This is clear from remarks by the author of ps.-Aristotle, de audibilibus (plausibly ascribed to Straton, head of the Peripatetic school c. 200 B.C.), 804b 8–11, and Dionysius Thrax (c. 170–90 B.C., see Linke, K.et al., Die Fragmente des Grammatikers Dionysius Thrax, etc. (Berlin & New York, 1977), 9Google Scholar; and Uhlig, G., ed., Dionysii Thracis ars grammatics (Leipzig, 1883), 21, lines 5 ffGoogle Scholar.). For evidence from Demotic Egyptian, Coptic, Armenian and Georgian transcriptions, up to 400 A.D., see Sturtevant, E. H., The Pronunciation of Greek and Latin, 2nd edn., (Groningen, 1968), 81 ff.Google Scholar,—so that Sayce's remarks in PSBA 1902, 122, are quite misleading.

16 But note ɑϲιɑθ (Schileico, loc. cit., line 5), if correctly interpreted as aṣṣiāti, cf. aṣ-ṣi-a-tim, VAB 4, 64 iii 46 (Nabopolassar).

17 Schileico, loc. cit., 13.

18 For instance οϲϵιρ (mušīri) (Geller, loc. cit., rev. 2), ω (ūmi) (ibid., rev. 8), ϲɑνɑϲ (Šamaš) (ibid., rev. 6).

19 Sturtevant, op. cit., 40 ff.

20 ibid., 37.

21 Sollberger, loc. cit., 67 B. 1 rev. 4.

22 Pinches, loc. cit., 117.

23 Schileico, loc. cit., 13.

24 ibid.

25 Geller, loc. cit., rev. 6 f. By the second century B.C. it would probably have been pronounced on its own as German ü, see Sturtevant, op. cit., 44.

26 loc. cit., 112 and photo, pl. 2 (opp. p. 111). Possibly the same letter is to be seen in (muḫḫi), Geller, loc. cit., rev. 1.

27 Sollberger, loc. cit., 64, rev. 205.

28 p. 65, rev. 213, although it is not as clear from the printed text as it is obvious from the photograph that the first ϵ is damaged.

29 Sollberger, loc. cit., 66.

30 Sollberger, loc. cit., 68, see CAD s.v. libittu, bilinguals section.

31 See van der Meer, P. in Iraq 5 (1938), 56, line 8Google Scholar.

32 For instance Δαώϲ for Dumuzi (actually for Damu) in Abydenus (FrGH 3C1, 685 F2), with loss of intervocalic -m- and addition of Greek nominative -c; Εὐεδώραγχον (Schnabel's conjecture against the Εὐεδώραχον and Εὐεδώρεϲχον of the MSS) for En-me-dur-an-ki in Berossus, FrGH 3C1, 680 F3, with intervocalic -mm- (resulting from assimilation of -nm-) appearing as υ and -k- as χ; Ναβονάϲαροϲ for Nabû-nāṣir ((pseudo-) Berossus of Cos (FrGH 3C1, 680 F16)) where ο represents Akk. û and c ṣ.

33 see von Soden, W., Grundriss der akkadischen Grammatik (Rome, 1952), 245 f.Google Scholar, § 192a, b.

34 Sollberger, loc. cit., 65.

35 Schileico, loc. cit., 13, line 4.

36 Geller, loc. cit., rev. 4.

37 Geller, loc. cit., rev. 9.

38 Sollberger, loc. cit., 65.

39 Sturtevant, op. cit., 37.

40 Witness the large number of Sumerian and Akkadian literary and cultic texts preserved in copies from there, bearing Seleucid and even Arsacid dates, and see the remarks of Sherwin-White, S. M. in ZPE 47 (1982), 51–70, esp. 52 fGoogle Scholar.

41 Gordon, C. H. in AfO 12 (1937), 105–110Google Scholar. Dr. Sebastian Brock was kind enough to examine the transliteration of the Ashmolean tablet. He isolated a number of sequences of letters which suggested Aramaic words, but did not feel that these amounted to sufficient evidence to conclude that Aramaic is the language of the text. Among these were: obv. I, rev. 1 λιλια ?lelya “night”; obv. 4 ιλαδ ?√yld “be born”; 9 ζεγαρο ?√zqr “hold back, forbid” (with 3ps. sg. masc. suffix?); 10 δϲεϲε ?d + šēṣe “who will save”; 11 γεβινα ?gbina “eyebrows”; μαρι ?marya “master”; rev. 1 χουχεβ ?kawkba “star”; 7 καβελ √qbl “receive”. These guesses might conceivably suggest that the text is a horoscope.

On the other hand, the tablet described by Gordon, loc. cit., represents an important attempt in the other direction, i.e. an attempt to record Aramaic in syllabic cuneiform. However, owing to the nature of the text (an incantation), it is possible that the tablet should be regarded as an ordinary cuneiform document recording syllabically a magical formula which happened to be in Aramaic, and whose efficiency lay in its being recited exactly (see Gordon, loc. cit., 105), rather than as any sort of orthographic experiment. On this text see also Landsberger, B., “Zu den aramäischen Beschwörungen in Keilschrift”, in AfO 12 (1937–1939), 247–257Google Scholar; and Gordon, G. H., “The Cuneiform Aramaic Incantation”, in Or NS 9 (1940), 29–38Google Scholar. McEwan, G.J.P., Texts from Hellenistic Babylonia in the Ashmolean Museum (OECT 9; Oxford, 1982), 35Google Scholar, gives notations in an unknown script, all from Uruk, which he compares to earlier Aramaic “dockets”. For surviving Aramaic inscriptions from Hellenistic Uruk, see Bowman, R. A., AJSL 56 (1939), 231–243Google Scholar, “Anu-uballiṭ—Kephalon”; Rostovtzeff, M. I., Seleucid Babylonia, TCS 3 (1942)Google Scholar, Appendix 2, by R. P. Dougherty; Uruk VII Berichte (1935), 35 and plate 38Google Scholar.

42 So Pinches, op. cit., 113; P. E. Van der Meer, op. cit., 125; Sollberger, op. cit., 63; P. R. S. Moorey, loc. cit.

43 Oelsner, J., MIO 17 (1972), 356–64Google Scholar. Sayce, op. cit., 124, leaves the question open; Meuleau, M., Mesopotamia under the Seleucids, in Grimal, P., Hellenism and the Rise of Rome (London, 1968), 266–289 at 289, is dubiousGoogle Scholar.

44 Cf, e.g. Préaux, C., Le Monde hellénistique II (Paris, 1978), 545 ffGoogle Scholar.

45 Momigliano, A., Alien Wisdom. The limits of Hellenization (Cambridge, 1975), chs. 1, 6CrossRefGoogle Scholar; idem, Essays in Ancient and Modern Historiography (Blackwell, 1977), ch. 2.

46 Strabo II 3. 4 (99–100).

47 Ghirshman, R., Persian Art. The Parthian and Sassanian Dynasties 243 B.C.–A.D. 651 (New York: London, 1962), 102Google Scholar; idem, Archaeologia 12 (1968), 53–9 at 59.

48 See ZPE 47 (1982), 66Google Scholar n. 58 for the use of clay tablets for Hellenistic Greek inscriptions from Susa and Babylon.

49 Pinches, op. cit., 109 ff.; Sayce, op. cit., 125; Burkitt, op. cit., 144–5.

50 Gadd, C. J., Teachers and Students in the Oldest Schools (Inaugural Lecture: London, 1956), 6Google Scholar.

51 Pinches, op. cit., 111. See n. 33 above. For the introduction of a sign for the alleged velar fricative ḫ see Burkitt, op. cit., 145 and above p. 136. See McEwan, G.J.P., Iraq 43 (1981), 141CrossRefGoogle Scholar, commenting on “a certain tendency towards alphabetization of the syllabary” in the writing of pu-ru-su-tat-te-su (Greek prostatēs) in an Arsacid temple record from Babylon of 115–114 B.C.

52 See e.g. McEwan, G. J. P., Priest and Temple in Hellenistic Babylonia (Freiburger altorientalische Studien 4: Wiesbaden, 1981), 151 (with n. 349)Google Scholar. For the growing evidence of the role of Babylonians in the Seleucid administration in Babylonia, see Sherwin-White, S. M., Babylonian Chronicle Fragments as a Source for Seleucid History (JNES 42 (1983), 265–270Google Scholar at 268–9, D. Administrative officials).

53 For example the seal impressions, with Greek, Greek-Oriental and non-Greek motifs, on bullae from Seleucia-Tigris and Uruk.