that many of the apparent flaws are due to modern ignorance of scribal conventions,
gaps in the recovery of cuneiform material and, particularly, the absence for us of the
guiding hand that helped the ancient scribal trainees. The breadth and depth of
coverage of material present in the lists, their remarkable longevity and the overall
fidelity of transmission are eloquent testimony the significant achievement that the
Babylonian lists represent.
NOTES
1 Ancient texts are quoted here in a simplified form, for clarity’s sake.
2 Alphabetic order was not an option for the Babylonians because of the nature of the cuneiform
writing system.
3 The term ‘cuneiform’ comes from the Latin word cuneus, meaning wedge.
4 A different version, known as Syllable Alphabet B was in use in Nippur. The use of the word
‘alphabet’ is potentially misleading. Cuneiform script is non-alphabetic. It uses characters
variously to represent words, syllables or the semantic set to which something belonged, such
as ‘wood’, ‘deity’ or ‘place’. These compositions seem to have acquired the label ‘alphabetic’
as part of their modern title because they drill the student in the forms of the individual signs,
much like children today practise their a, b, c.
5 In antiquity, compositions were known by their first line of text. This practice is usually kept
in the modern study of those compositions. The term ‘proto’ has historically been attached to
compositions known also in a ‘canonical’ first-millennium version. This term erroneously
implies that the Old Babylonian versions are imperfect first steps towards the later version.
In reality, the Old Babylonian versions are fully evolved for the system within which they
functioned. The term is retained as a useful way to distinguish between earlier and later
versions.
6 A rough equivalent would be to start with ‘o’, add a stroke to make ‘a’, then extend it to
make ‘d’.
7 Bilingual lists dating to the third millennium are known from the Syrian site of Ebla. There,
the scribes copied Mesopotamian lists, adding translations in the local language.
8 Kassite was the native language of the dynasty ruling Babylonia during the Middle Babylonian
period. Only rarely was Kassite committed to writing.
9 Tradition kept the Sumerian column as the ordering column in all the older lists.
10 The Akkadian words here are all derived from the same ‘root’ (three letters carrying a general
meaning, around which other elements were added to specify more specific meaning), in this
case b n y.
11 Long lists are divided into parts called ‘tablets’, corresponding to how many standard-sized
clay tablets were required to contain the full text of the composition.
12 Commentaries also existed for other list-type genres, such as medical texts or the omens;
commentaries to the omens are, in fact, much more common than those to the lexical lists.
Commentaries were not restricted to list-like genres, however. Literary texts were also subject
to commentaries. These other types of text had also begun to assume a fixed, standardised
form and their interpretation required assistance.
13 Mesopotamian architecture is mud-brick based.
BIBLIOGRAPHYCavigneaux, A. ( 1983 ) ‘Lexikalische Listen’, in Reallexikon der Assyriologie und vorderasiatischen
Archäologie 6 (Berlin/New York: W. de Gruyter) pp. 609 – 641.
Civil, M. ( 1975 ) ‘Lexicography’, in Sumerological Studies in Honor of Thorkild Jacobsen on His Seventieth
Birthday, June 7 , 1974 (Assyriological Studies 20. Chicago/London: University of Chicago Press)
pp. 123 – 157.
— Babylonian lists of words and signs —