© 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 6.2.7.B - Weidner's God List / Diri 7 (?) B The multi-column tablet VAT 10220 (+) VAT 10249 (KAV 46 and 47) was found in the “House of the Exorcist” in Assur and dates to the late Neo-Assyrian period. |
CCP 6.1.17 - Aa III/2 (pirsu 17) Courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum
This small fragment of the lower left corner of a tablet was found by Hormuzd Rassam at the Babylonian site of Jimjima and entered the collection of the British Museum in 1881. |
CCP 7.2.u44 - Uncertain Courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum
This tiny fragment from the British Museum’s “Babylon Collection” preserves meager remains of a lexical list or tabular commentary dealing with field pests. |
CCP 3.5.34 - Ālu 34 Courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum
This fragment belongs to the British Museum’s “Babylon Collection” (its accession number is 81-4-28,294). |
CCP 4.2.A.a - Therapeutic (én munus ù-tu-ud-da-a-ni) A This tablet contains what is probably the best preserved commentary yet discovered: not a single sign is missing. |
CCP 3.5.103 - Ālu 103, 104 alt, and […] Courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum
The fragment edited below represents the lower half of a commentary tablet on the series of “terrestrial” omens Šumma Ālu. It contains glosses on several chapters of the series, which deal with prognoses derived from sexual behavior. |
CCP 4.2.D - Therapeutic D The present tablet explains the tenth section (pirsu) of the series Šumma amīlu muḫḫašu ummu ukâl. |
CCP 4.1.3.B - Sagig 3 B Courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum
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