Notes on a New Volume of Old Assyrian Texts (Book Review‪)‬

THIS LARGE, RICH, AND WELL-EDITED volume is an important and most welcome contribution to Old Assyrian studies. The complete and reliable edition, with cuneiform copies, transliterations, translations, notes, and indices, of nearly 350 mostly well-preserved "Kultepe texts" by three specialists in the held, is an important event. It is particularly welcome, because it includes many documents of already well-known traders, some of which have been used, quoted, and edited by Lubor Matous in his many contributions to Old Assyrian. Their full publication now provides much additional data on the activities of their writers and allows a better reconstruction of their archives, which were scattered by local diggers and antiquities dealers. With this volume, a sequel to Matous-Matousova 1984 (KKS), which contains all documents bearing seal impressions, the complete collection of "Kultepe texts" owned by the University of Prague is now available for study. We owe a debt of gratitude to Professor Hecker, who has been involved with this collection for more than twenty years, and to his collaborator Dr. Kryszat for their joint edition of this large collection. They could build on the work already done and left behind after his death in 1984 by Lubor Matous, one of the early specialists in Old Assyrian, to whom this collection had been entrusted for publication and who duly figures as co-author of the volume. The Prague collection of ca. 420 texts (numbers I 426-847), eight of which are now missing (for a few, transliterations made by L. Matous could be used) and a further nine of which are forgeries, goes back to the archaeological activities of Bedrich Hrozny, who excavated at Kultepe in 1925. Detailed information on their origin is missing, but it is clear that the group comprises both tablets excavated in Kultepe and documents purchased there or elsewhere in Turkey. Evidence for the former are texts which can be joined with those excavated and published in ICK I and II, such as KKS 4 + ICK II 189 + Ka 519; KKS 38 + Ka 630 + ICK II 39; KKS 45b + ICK I 46 + II 76/77; I 513 + ICK II 221; I 579 + ICK II 10 (case); I 588 + (case) ICK II 160 + 162 (case); I 536 duplicates ICK II 145. More examples are now listed by G. Kryszat in Veenhof AV, 268-73. Purchased texts include those belonging to "old" archives, such as that of Pushuken, discovered by local diggers during the first decades of the previous century, and the forgeries.