Organised by: Dr Jon Taylor (The British Museum)
jjtaylor@thebritishmuseum.ac.uk
Location: Sackler Room, Clore Centre, The British Museum.
Time: Tuesday 13th April
Workshop Description:
This workshop is not about cuneiform. It focuses on tablets as artefacts. For while the inscriptions yield a wealth of information about Mesopotamian societies, the clay of the tablets can reveal much about which the texts remain silent. The scribes carefully selected and worked their raw materials. This was the first thing they learned at school. They were taught the forms that tablets should take, and what each part of a tablet was for. They learned how tablets were used; this included such things as how to make and attach an envelope, and who should seal the tablet, how, in what order and where.
The four sessions each focus on one aspect of tablets as artefacts. The first uses theoretical and experimental approaches to investigate the manufacture of tablets and related objects. The second concentrates on the use of tablets, in particular on enveloping and sealing practices. The third looks at non-written features and their relation to the inscriptions. The fourth uses scientific techniques to investigate palaeo-environment. It also completes the circle, shedding light on the sources of clays used in tablet production.
| Time | Name | Paper Title |
|---|---|---|
| 09.20 | Taylor | Welcome and introduction |
| 09:30 | Taylor | Making and re-making tablets and other clay objects |
| 10:00 | Widell | My Manchurian summer: When it's too hot to work anyway |
| 10:30 | Discussion | |
| 10:45 | COFFEE | COFFEE |
| 11:15 | van Koppen | Old Babylonian contract tablets and their envelopes: how were case tablets made? |
| 11.45 | Tanret | The wonderful thing about tablets is tablets are wonderful things, their tops are made for sealings, their bottoms are too. On sealing practice on Old Babylonian tablets |
| 12.15 | Walker | Patterns of seal use on Late Babylonian tablets |
| 12.45 | Discussion | |
| 12.55 | LUNCH | LUNCH |
| 14.00 | Wunsch | Nailmark analysis as a tool for classifying and dating tablets |
| 14.30 | Finkel | Drawings on tablets |
| 15.00 | Tarawneh | The wedge and the clay |
| 15.30 | Discussion | |
| 15.45 | COFFEE | COFFEE |
| 16.15 | Tuji | Reconstructing the landscape of the ancient environment in Mesopotamia through biological indicators found in clay tablets |
| 16:45 | Cartwright | Environmental data from shells and plant remains in tablets |
| 17.15 | Uchida | Non-destructive analysis of clay tablets by using a handheld XRF and a magnetic susceptibility meter |
| 17:45 | Discussion |
Workshop Abstracts
Environmental data from shells and plant remains in tablets
Dr Caroline Cartwright and Dr Jon Taylor (The British Museum, UK)
This paper examines the distribution and content of organic remains in and on cuneiform tablets, drawing on the most recent detailed scientific examination of these materials using optical and scanning electron microscopy. This research has revealed unexpected evidence for aspects of the natural environment and its resources. Identification of the charcoal flecks in the tablets, for example, indicates what trees and shrubs were present in the area from which the clay was selected. Fragmented plant remains or impressions of plants on the surfaces of the tablets show how the tablets might have been stored in antiquity - possibly between layers of cereal straw. Land snails and freshwater molluscs have also been found in the clay matrices of some tablets. As many of these molluscs have very specific habitats, we have gained significant information about the raw material and its provenance. The challenges for ongoing study of organic materials associated with these objects will be discussed.
ccartwight@thebritishmuseum.ac.uk
Drawings on tablets
Dr Irving Finkel (The British Museum, UK)
This talk will address a much-overlooked aspect of scribal ability, namely the art of drawing. A small selection of tablets is known that include drawings of a high degree of mastery, revealing that certain scribes were able to draw realistically and free-hand in the inhospitable medium of clay, to a level that inevitably points to specific and lengthy training. The rarity of such drawings does not prevent the conclusion that drawing must have been, at least in some contexts, a curricular requirement. Several examples will be illustrated, and some further consideration given to the implications that they have with regard to the nature and evolution of the cuneiform signs themselves.
ifinkel@thebritishmuseum.ac.uk
The wonderful thing about tablets is tablets are wonderful things, their tops are made for sealings, their bottoms are too. On sealing practice on Old Babylonian tablets
Dr Michael Tanret (University of Ghent, Belgium)
Tablets are many things: archaeological objects, bearers of texts but also of seals. Seals are rolled on certain parts of them and this sealing practice evolves through time. The presentation will describe some general trends of this practice. The order in which witnesses or parties to the contract seal is not haphazard, and knowledge of this can help to identify seal owners or users. This will be illustrated by the seals of the sangas of the Ebabbar in Sippar. There is a strong link between a seal and its owner, but other people can use the same seal too; who and why will also be examined in this presentation.
The wedge and the clay
Ms Hanadah Tarawneh (Maqcuarie University, Australia)
In most cases the Amarna letters bear the name of the sender and his locality. In some cases the text is broken and one has to rely on other techniques in an attempt to place these tablets in their proper regions. These techniques can be linguistic as well as scientific, such as studying the type of clay that was used to produce these tablets of uncertain origin.
This paper will attempt to show how the linguistic features (the wedge) together with the composition of the tablet (the clay) may assist researchers in placing some of the Amarna letters from unknown senders and regions in their actual localities.
The paper will use for its petrographic background the recent work of Yuval Goren, Israel Finkelstein and Nadev Na'aman, Inscribed in Clay, together with the researcher's own work on the various linguistic features in the letters. This approach of combining two disciplines –scientific and linguistic – can offer an enhanced reading to the text and assist in shedding more light on the tablets and their origins.
Making and re-making tablets and other clay objects
Dr Jon Taylor (The British Museum, UK)
Little attention has been given to tablets as archaeological objects. This paper investigates two aspects of the life cycle of tablets and other clay objects inscribed with cuneiform: manufacture and recycling.
A number of different manufacturing techniques can be identified, ranging in complexity from very basic to more elaborate. The process was much more sophisticated than just rolling a ball of clay and flattening it in the hand.
Several theories about recycling have been formulated. There is also a growing body of evidence that has been interpreted as tablet recycling in progress. However, these interpretations are problematic in themselves, when compared to each other and when compared to the current theories.
jjtaylor@thebritishmuseum.ac.uk
Reconstructing the landscape of the ancient environment in Mesopotamia through biological indicators found in clay tablets
Dr Akihiro Tuji (National Museum of Nature and Science) and Dr Chikako Watanabe (Osaka Gakuin University)
This paper investigates ways of tracing environmental change in Mesopotamia by analysing the clay used in cuneiform tablets. Very little work has been done on studying the material aspects of clay tablets. In 2008 we examined clay tablets with a microscope and detected diatoms and phytoliths in the clay. The tablets examined are in the collection of economic texts from Umma during the Ur III period owned by the British Museum and Yale Babylonian Collection.
Textual studies have suggested that the decline of crop yields toward the end of the Ur III period was caused by progressive salinity in the soil. However, there are differences of opinion amongst scholars as to the interpretation of the decline, and no further research has been carried out on this theme since 1985. Our study approaches this problem from a different angle by examining the issue of salinity in the context of broader environmental change through biological data.
Diatoms are types of algae found in almost every aquatic environment; some species reside in fresh water and others live in salty water. By identifying the species, we can reconstruct the aquatic environment in which they lived. In the south of Mesopotamia, farming was only possible through irrigation. Thus the salinity of the water in the canals and rivers should reflect that of the irrigation water used in the fields. A phytolith is a rigid microscopic body that occurs in many plants. It is an extremely useful biological indicator to reconstruct aspects of the vegetation present at the site from which the clay was collected. We also consider as yet unidentified shells which were found in the tablets. The shells could be those of land snails, and if so, they also serve as important evidence in reconstructing the environment. The paper presents the different methods we applied and shows our preliminary results.
Non-destructive analysis of clay tablets by using a handheld XRF and a magnetic susceptibility meter
Prof. Etsuo Uchida (Waseda University), Dr Chikako Watanabe (Osaka Gakuin University) and Mr Toshiki Sasaki (Waseda University)
This paper presents a preliminary result of analyses conducted on clay tablets by a handheld X-ray fluorescence (XRF) analyzer: α-4000 of Innov-X Systems and a magnetic susceptibility meter: SM-30 of ZH Instruments. The analyses were carried out completely in a non-destructive method, in which some 180 clay tablets from the Yale Babylonian Collection were examined. The tablets are from Umma, Ur, Adab, Drehem, Nippur, Sippar, Lagash and Uruk. The calibration for the XRF analyzer was performed using the standard rocks prepared by the Geological Survey of Japan. The size correction was conducted for the measured magnetic susceptibility values. The following elements can quantitatively be analyzed with high reliability by a measuring time of one minute: Ba, Ca, Cr, Fe, K, Mn, Ni, Rb, Sr, Ti and Zr (As, Zn). It has been elucidated that the combination of strontium (Sr) and rubidium (Rb) and that of Sr and the magnetic susceptibility can serve as effective parameters in order to estimate the provenance of the raw material used for the clay tablets.
Old Babylonian contract tablets and their envelopes: how were case tablets made?
Mr Frans van Koppen (Birkbeck College (London)
The case tablet was the favourite legal instrument of Mesopotamian scribes from the Ur III to the middle of the Old Babylonian period, and continued to be used afterwards for a limited range of purposes in Assyria. The inscribed tablet was enclosed within a thin layer of clay (the "envelope" or "case"), upon which the whole text of the agreement including the names of the witnesses was repeated. The seals of the witnesses and of the conceding party of the agreement were also impressed on the envelope. The purpose of case tablets was to create a secure copy to which no fraudulent changes could be made and which could be consulted by removing the outer layer whenever the agreement was contested.
Little is known about the technique of creating case tablets such that the two bodies of clay did not stick together, but it has been suggested that the inner tablet was left to dry thoroughly before the outer layer of clay was wrapped around it. In order to test this hypothesis, textual variations between inner tablets and envelopes in Old Babylonian Sippar has been examined for evidence about the interval between the writing of the two versions. The existence of an interval is supported not only by different dates on tablet and envelope, but also by variation in the lists of witnesses; these show that some people who had been present when the agreement was orally concluded and the inner tablet was written were no longer present when it was time for them to impress their seals on the envelope. This study not only confirms that inner tablets were left to dry for sometimes several days, but also sharpens our understanding of the practical and social aspects of the manufacture of Old Babylonian legal texts.
Patterns of seal use on Late Babylonian tablets
Mr Christopher Walker (The British Museum, retired)
Abstract needed
My Manchurian Summer: When it's Too Hot to Work Anyway
Dr Magnus Widell (Liverpool University)
Based on a series of practical experiments, this paper investigates possibilities — and impossibilities — in the use of clay for cuneiform tablets and tablet envelopes. The analysis and integration of such data offers important new insights into our understanding of sealing practices and administrative and archival procedures of the late third millennium BC, which are currently poorly understood.
Nailmark analysis as a tool for classifying and dating tablets
Dr Cornelia Wunsch (Independent scholar)
Nailmarks (Akkadian supru) are easily recognizable features on tablets. During the Neo/Late-Babylonian Period they appear on a limited number of contract types only and differ in their appearance according to transaction types. Nailmarks therefore allow for a rough classification and dating of tablets. The way they are impressed and their position on the edges clearly are linked to the contents of the tablets and the function of the people who left these impressions. This paper provides a survey with numerous samples and illustrations.