A literary catalog
Artifact: Clay tablet
Provenience: Nippur
Period: Late Old Babylonian Period (ca 1800-1595 BC)
Current location: University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Philadelphia (UM 29-15-155)
Text genre, language: Literary; Sumerian
CDLI page, ETCSL page
Description: The small four-column tablet from Nippur and nowadays in Philadelphia collects the incipits of Sumerian literary compositions. Whether such "catalogues" reflect the curricular setting in Old Babylonian Nippur or are mere inventories of literary works, is still under debate. Most of its entries can be affiliated to a known literary composition. There are even older examples, as the catalogue YBC 3654 (CDLI page), which dates to the Ur III period. That catalogue collects (possibly) the initial lines of 32 royal songs (en8-du lugal) and ten "old"(?) (en8-du IGI.SZE3-am3) songs. Just three of the entries listed there could be assigned to known literary texts so far. (Klaus Wagensonner, University of Oxford)
Lineart: BASOR 88, 12
Edition(s): Kramer, S.N. 1942. "The Oldest Literary Catalogue: A Sumerian List of Literary Compositions Compiled about 2000 B. C.", Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 88, pp. 10 - 19.