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This is an interesting fragmentary tablet in private European collection.

Had the owner not contacted me it would have remained simply a fragment of unbaked clay with unread cuneiform writing impressed upon it.

I'm endlessly amazed that so many collectors retain such as this and do not endeavour to have the text read. That is a really a great pity.

However this  owner of this fragment definitely  wanted to know what was written here and it turns out to be very interesting.

I am creating this small section to show how one can often quite easily elaborate upon the information provided by a tablet reading as there is a vast amount of easily accessible in formation online about cuneiform tablets.

 



It records a transaction involving  two foreigners: Puzur- Mama a man of Mari  and Ili-Dagan a man of Ebla.

These 'foreigners' are mentioned on other tablets as well.

 



Zabar-Dab 

 



This is a title of a high court official whose name originally meant the one who holds the mirror, lit. the bronze. The word zabar-dab5 for this title comes from the words zabar "bronze" and a verbal root meaning "to grasp". The zabar-dab5 played an important role in the texts that document deliveries of animals to the cults of the various deities maintained by the state and it has been suggested that this was the highest cultic official in the Ur III state

Mari is modern Tall al-Hariri an ancient Mesopotamian city situated on the right bank of the (middle) Euphrates River south of its junction with the Habor (Khabur).    The site was discovered by chance in the early 1930s by Arabs digging graves and has subsequently been excavated by the French, initially directed by Andre Parrot and begun in 1933, uncovered remains extending from about 3100 BC to the 7th century AD.

 

Ebla was an ancient city located  34 miles south  of Aleppo. First excavated in 1964, the ruins of the city were discovered in 1973 by an Italian archaeological expedition from the University of Rome.

 

These two 'foreigners'  Puzur-Mama a man of Mari  and Ili-Dagan a man of Ebla are elsewhere documented: -

 

Four Ur Dynasty Tablets Mentioning Foreigners

Albrecht Goetze

Journal of Cuneiform Studies

Vol. 7, No. 3 (1953), pp. 103-107

 

www.jstor.org/stable/1359547

 

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