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).

Recent additions to the corpus

CCP 3.1.24.E - Enūma Anu Enlil 24(25) E Courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum [Reproduced from J. C.	CCP 3.1.26.A - Enūma Anu Enlil 26(27) A The present tablet, which stems perhaps from the library of the Uruk scholar Anu-ikṣur, preserves the upper part of a commentary on the astrological divinatory text Enūma Anu Enlil 26(27).	CCP 2.2.1.A.b - Marduk’s Address, Muššuʾu, and Udughul A This small landscape-oriented tablet from Assur contains commentarial notes on two lines of the incantation Marduk’s Address to the Demons, a line of an incantation so far attested only in Muššu’u, and a line of Udugḫul III.	CCP 4.1.34 - Sagig 34 The present tablet, copied by [Iqīšāya son of Ištar-šumu-ēreš], of the Ekurzakir family, is according to its rubric a ṣâtu-commentary on a tablet whose incipit is šumma amēlu ana sinništīšu libbašu inaššīšū-ma, “If a man has desire f
CCP 2.2.1.B - Marduk’s Address B Courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum This large tablet contains a commentary on a section of the exorcistic text known as “Marduk’s Address to the Demons.” Only a few lines (ll. 60-74) are commented upon in the tablet.	CCP 2.2.2 - Udug-hul 2-4 © Vorderasiatisches Museum This small one-column tablet, Ass. 13955ao (VAT 8286, LKA 82), contains a commentary on selected lines from Udug-ḫul II, III and IV.	CCP 2.3 - Namburbi Courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum According to its rubric, this tablet contains a series of “questions” (mašʾaltu) on a ritual against the “evil signs that are seen against a man and his house.” The base text of the commentary is preserved in a tablet from Assur, LKA	CCP 1.3 - Ludlul Courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum Ludlul Bēl Nēmeqi is one of the few Akkadian literary texts that attracted the exegetical attention of ancient scholarly commentators.

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