The Babylonian World - Historia Antigua

— Jon Taylor —
Syllable Vocabulary A. The Akkadian words in the new column were an attempt at
interpretation of the signs, which previously had been practised here purely for their
visual form rather than for any underlying meaning. Some of the interpretations are
sober (since some signs can be used to represent whole words) but others seem more
speculative and fanciful. We also see lists of deities become a standard part of the
curriculum; they were to remain so in the Neo-Babylonian period. Such lists had
been known already from the middle of the third millennium but only now did they
become standard.
The second great innovation of the Middle Babylonian period is the canonisation
of the lists. It is evident that the flexibility of the lists so characteristic for the Old
Babylonian period was sacrificed in favour of a common, fixed form. Clearly there
were still different versions of the compositions in circulation, since not every source
known agrees with every other. But from both Babylonia and Assyria we find a
significant number of sources containing text in a form familiar to us from the first
millennium version of the compositions.
The Middle Babylonian versions of lists are much longer than the corresponding
Old Babylonian versions. This is a result of several factors. Knowledge of Sumerian
was steadily declining, and while Old Babylonian lists could be in somewhat
abbreviated form, Middle Babylonian lists were far more explicit and also comprehensive.
As scribes struggled with interpreting existing Sumerian texts and composing
new ones, less could be taken for granted than before. Also, as the lists were used as
an aid to translation, and Akkadian translation technique tended towards word-forword
transposition, we see the appearance of entries where a translation has been
attached to only part of its original equivalent.
From the Middle Babylonian period we also see the emergence of a practice largely
unknown from the Old Babylonian period but much better known from the Neo-
Babylonian period. Whereas the transmission of texts had previously been
predominantly oral, now the direct copying of tablets from manuscript examples
becomes more commonplace. Concern is also shown for the quality of sources. Tablets
contain colophons at the end, stating the origin and antiquity of the original being
copied, plus various notes bearing on the copying process, including such information
as the name of the copier and whether or not the copy has been checked against the
original.
THE NEO-BABYLONIAN AND LATE
BABYLONIAN LISTS
From the first millennium we possess texts from several sites in Babylonia, but again
we are in debt to the Assyrians. Many lists are best known from the famous library
of Ashurbanipal at Nineveh. As mentioned above, the Middle Babylonian period saw
the lists assume a stable form. This is the form we see in Neo-Babylonian sources.
All the major lists from the Middle Babylonian period survived, and so did the
concern for the source and quality of the manuscripts from which the lists were
copied. By this point, the lists had grown to huge proportions. The sign list Ea had
grown to eight ‘tablets’, 11 containing altogether approximately 2,400 entries. The
more comprehensive Aa was 42 tablets long, containing 14,400 entries. Diri held
2,100 entries on seven tablets, Urra over 9,700 entries on 24 tablets and Nabnitu
440