© Yale Babylonian Collection
Mesopotamian commentaries represent the world’s oldest cohesive group of hermeneutic texts. Numbering nearly 900, the earliest date to the eighth century and the latest to ca. 100 BCE. The purpose of this website is to make the corpus available both to the scholarly community and a more general audience by providing background information on the genre, a searchable catalog, as well as photos, drawings, annotated editions, and translations of individual commentary tablets. For the first time the cuneiform commentaries, currently scattered over 21 museums around the globe, will be accessible on one platform.
The Cuneiform Commentaries Project is funded by Yale University (2013-2016) and the National Endowment for the Humanities (Division of Research Programs “Scholarly Editions and Translations,” 2015-2018).
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Recent additions to the corpus
CCP 3.5.42 - Ālu 42 (?) This tiny fragment was found in Uruk, among other tablets belonging to the tablet collection of Iqīšāya. |
CCP 3.5.48 - Ālu 48 Courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum
This small tablet, containing 25 lines in total, is a commentary on Šumma Ālu 48. |
CCP 3.4.8.C - Bārûtu 8 Kakku C Courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum
A small fragment from the top left of the obverse side of a multi-column tablet of a commentary on the eighth chapter of the divination treatise bārûtu, “extispicy.” This chapter is concerned with the “weapon,” kakku, a small piece o |
CCP 3.2.u1.A.b - Sîn ina tāmartīšu (?) A Courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum
K 3155 is a celestial-divinatory commentary concerned with the Moon, though seemingly unconnected to any one tablet of Enūma Anu Enlil. |
CCP 3.4.1.A.i - Bārûtu 1 Isru A Courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum
This tablet represents the latest known exemplar of the commentary on Isru, the first chapter of the series Barûtu. |
CCP 3.1.u51 - Enūma Anu Enlil, eclipses Courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum
This is a small fragment with a commentary on eclipse omens. The obverse is almost completely lost, and only the left hand part of ten lines of the reverse are preserved. |
CCP 3.1.u76 - Enūma Anu Enlil Courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum
This fragment belongs to a commentary on an astrological text dealing with moon omens, although the exact base text remains unidentifiable. It was found in Ashurbanipal’s libraries in Nineveh. |
CCP 3.1.u91 - Enūma Anu Enlil Šamaš and Adad Courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum
This tablet preserves three columns of a tabular commentary on several tablets of Enūma Anu Enlil. |
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