The Ancient Near East: Texts, Traditions, etc.

The Ancient Near East: Texts, Traditions, etc. Christopher T. Begg ________ 834. [Receiving Ištar through the Seven Veils of Oscar Wilde's Salomé] Talah Anderson, "Receiving Ištar through the Seven Veils of Oscar Wilde's Salomé," AO 41 (1, 2023) 5–26. This paper considers the suggestion that the "dance of the seven veils" referred to in an enigmatic stage direction given in the script of Oscar Wilde's 1890s play Salomé may have been influenced in part by the Akkadian poem Ištar's Descent to the Netherworld. While it is possible that Wilde had some knowledge of the Akkadian document, this cannot be proved conclusively. A more plausible explanation may be found in the "Assyrianizing" early stage directions for the play and Richard Strauss's operatic adaptation of the play. My exploration of the entangled topics of Wilde's potential reception of Ištar's Descent and the reception of Wilde's Salomé represents a useful lens through which to consider the afterlife of Ištar, and by extension, ancient Mesopotamia, in late 19th-cent. Europe and beyond. [Adapted from published abstract—C.T.B.] 835. [A Progress Report on the Publication of the Ebla Archives] Alfonso Archi, "Publication of the Archives of Ebla: A Report on the Work in Progress," Studia Eblaitica 8 (2022) 29–41 [see #1495]. The largest group of documents from the Central Archive at Ebla concerns incomes and expenditures for garments and metals of the Central Administration, which have been published over the course of the last 41 years. A small selection of a variety of texts, i.e., chancery documents, field allotments, agricultural production, were published in the span of six years, and subsequently were systematically destroyed. Also represented are lexical lists, a few literary texts, and some incantations. The lexical lists have been reconstructed, mostly on the basis of small fragments, and a new edition of the Bilingual Lists is in preparation in a series which will include the Sumerian lists as well. A large selection of different kinds of administrative documents is presented in ARET I and II. Further documents in the ARET series feature homogenous groups of texts: All the extant chancery documents have been published by P. Fronzaroli and A. Catagnoti. Fronzaroli has also edited the ritual for the royal wedding (see ARET XI, XIII, XVI, and XVIII). The volumes ARET I, IV, VII, XV, XIX, and XX are devoted to the monthly expenditures for garments; by this point, approximately one-third of this corpus (some 500 texts) has been published. ARET VII includes the first part of the single recordings of expenditures for metals; a second volume will complete the publication of this corpus totaling about 500 tablets. The annual documents for the intake of metals and garments (along with complementary documentation for a total of 110 texts) is published in ARET XIV. The edition of the annual documents relating to expenditures for metals is in preparation. 2,050 fragments of tablets (two-thirds of the total) have been edited in ARET III and XII. The documentation concerning the supply of foodstuffs for the palace was preserved in another archive, the first part of which has been published in ARET IX, and the second part will appear in ARET X. [Adapted from published abstract—C.T.B.] 836. [Therapeutic Prescriptions and Magical-Medical Rituals against Fever] András Bácskay, "Therapeutic Prescriptions and Magical-Medical Rituals against Fever: An Edition of a Late Babylonian Tablet BM 5516 + BM 55577 + 1882,0703.188," JCS 75 (2023) 125–69. The tablet BM 5516+ contains therapeutic prescriptions involving ointments and fumigations and magical-medical rituals including incantations against fever (ummu) and "persistent fever" (ummu lazzu). I know of no duplicate of this tablet, but the prescriptions and incantations cited on it have several parallels on medical tablets from Assur, Nineveh, Kalhu, and Babylon. I provide here an edition of the tablet, including all parallels known to me, together with a discussion of the two magical-medical rituals against fever mentioned in the text. [Adapted from published abstract—C.T.B.] 837. [A Reedition of the Persepolis Treasury Tablet PT 1963–8] Jalil...