© 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 3.1.27.B - Enūma Anu Enlil 27(28) B Courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum
In its current state of preservation, this commentary deals with twelve omens derived from the appearance of the sun and drawn from the end of the ‘Babylonian’ recension of Tablet (‘Chapter’) 27 (28) of Enūma Anu Enlil, the divination trea |
CCP 1.2 - Lugale Courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum
In its current condition, this manuscript consists of four joined fragments from the centre of what must have originally been a large tablet with three columns on each side. |
CCP 6.1.2 - Aa I/2 Courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum
The present text is a fragment of a fairly large multi-column tablet with at least two columns per side. Each column is divided into three subcolumns: (1) pronunciation, (2) logogram, and (3) Akkadian equivalent. |
CCP 2.1.C - Tummu bītu, Šurpu 2 C A fairly well preserved one-column tablet found among numerous other tablets in a private house in Aššur explains portions from Tummu bītu, an Akkadian incantation preventing evil spirits from entering the house, and from the second tablet |
CCP 1.4 - Theodicy Courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum
The Theodicy is one of the most sophisticated literary texts in the long history of Mesopotamian belles lettres. |
CCP 3.9.u8 - Uncertain Courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum
This small fragment, classified as a “scholarly text” in the catalogue of the Kuyunjik Collection,1 preserves meager remains of a tabular commentar |
CCP 4.2.H - Therapeutic / Physiognomic H |
CCP 4.2.A.b - Therapeutic (én munus ù-tu-ud-da-a-ni) A Courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum
This tablet, which probably dates to the Achaemenid period, is one of the only two known commentaries from the city of Ur (the other is UET 4 208 = CCP 6.3.18). |
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