The Rosen Collection texts at the Yale Peabody Museum

Nisaba 34 publishes 1,204 previously unpublished Neo-Sumerian cuneiform tablets from the Rosen Babylonian Collection, now housed primarily in the Yale Babylonian Collection (Peabody Museum of Natural History, Yale University). The texts date to the period of the Third Dynasty of Ur (ca. 2100–2003 BCE) and originate mainly from Umma, with additional material from Puzriš-Dagan and Ĝirsu/Lagaš.The volume presents a large corpus of economic and administrative documents that offer significant insights into the organisation of the Ur III economy and society.

The tablets record a wide range of activities, including transfers of animals (especially sheep, but also cattle, goats, donkeys, pigs, and birds), temple offerings, payments to workers, food rations (barley, beer, and flour), records of dead livestock, garden produce, raw materials and manufactured goods (wood, reeds, baskets, textiles, leather, metals), trade transactions, wool receipts, and messengers' rations. The edition is the result of a long-term collaboration between Tohru Ozaki, Marcel Sigrist, and Sergio Tang.

Marcel Sigrist originally read 709 tablets, with an additional 495 texts added by Sergio Tang. Between 2022 and 2023, the tablets were photographed and made available online, allowing for systematic verification of the readings and enhancing the overall reliability of the edition (https://collections.peabody.yale.edu/search). By making available a substantial body of previously unpublished Neo-Sumerian economic texts, Nisaba 34 constitutes an important contribution to the study of Ur III administration, economy, and social organisation, and will serve as a key reference work for Assyriologists and historians of ancient Mesopotamia. [Publisher's text]

Cuneiform texts in transliterated neo-Sumerian; critical matter in English.

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