Old Babylonian Contracts From Nippur I

The traditional way of publishing cuneiform texts is in the form of hand copies. This system requires, on the one hand, long hours of painstaking work by an experienced cuneiformist, and, on the other hand, a modicum of artistic talent, not necessarily associated with scholarly abilities. The results are often unsightly, and worse, they may fail to give a trustworthy representation of the original, misleading the reader and creating the need for collations of the tablet. While the superiority of the photographic reproduction is generally accepted, technical and, above all, economic considerations have prevented its use on a large scale. The microfiche format seems a practical and economical solution to the problem of publishing an extensive corpus of cuneiform texts. As a bonus, since the task can be carried out by any competent photographer with a minimum of special training, the cuneiformist will have more time to devote to his specific scholarly tasks. If the microfiche system is accepted as a useful tool by our colleagues, the present collection of Old Babylonian contracts from Philadelphia will be followed by collections of the Old Babylonian contracts found at Nippur in the postwar excavations, of the lexical sources used in Materials for the Sumerian Lexicon, and of other large bodies of texts. [After the Foreword by M. Civil]