Rediscovering a piece of lost ancient history and another historical poll
From the Editor
From the Editor
Last week I shared a report of a newly translated old discovery of a Sumerian myth, excavated in the 19th century.
Despite the tablet having been excavated in the 19th century, a comprehensive edition and analysis has thus far never been published.
This may in part be due to the tablet's fragmented nature, which provides as many answers as it does questions. Additionally, when it was chosen to adorn the dust jacket of a book by Samuel Noah Kramer in 1956, Kramer omitted its museum number, only providing it in a separate publication five years later.
The problem? The 4400 year old tablet (Ni 12501) was sitting on a shelf somewhere, in a storage room, collecting dust. No one knew anything about it until Dr. Jana Matuszak came along and studied it. This isn’t a unique case either.
While I am glad that time is being spent rediscovering these ancient artifacts and texts, it reinforces my belief in that maybe, these institution should open the doors to their vaults, metaphorically speaking. I vented about this recently. I know that it will take time and effort (and a budget) but there are many eager history enthusiasts who would jump at the opportunity to volunteer and help catalogue more of these discoveries on-line. Access and preservation being key. And there are even more passionate folks who can definitely help with translations. <clears throat> Myself included.
Honestly, I do not know what this would look like but having these items collect dust in an institution’s storage room is no different than having it not discovered in the first place.
What are your thoughts?
Quote
Be slow to fall into friendship; but when thou art in, continue firm and constant. - Socrates
Poll Question
Last Week’s Poll Answer
The question was: The Code of Hammurabi originates from...
And was featured in the editorial newsletter:
The majority of you were correct in voting for Mesopotamia. Hammurabi was a Babylonian king who ruled the Old Babylonian Empire from c. 1792 to c. 1750 BC. And Babylon was situated in southern Mesopotamia. He is most well known for establishing his code of laws or the Code of Hammurabi. The stela we are most familiar with was found in the ancient Elamite city of Susa (in modern-day Iran). Copies of the text were also discovered in Babylon, Nineveh, Assur, Borsippa, Nippur, Sippar, Ur, Larsa, and more.
I sort of agree. The British Museum in particular hosts a trove of Mesopotamian tablets that are uncatalogued, unstudied, in pieces or all three at once, and I know that they have, or had at some point, volunteer teams helping with this. I don't even live in the UK, but I have been collecting Babylonian grammars for a while hoping that at some point my lifestyle will allow me the leisure to learn to decipher these texts (volunteering for the BM would be a dream plan for my retirement). If materials could be digitalised, they would be much easier to access, and potentially AI could be used constructively to put pieces together and possibly transcribe texts, saving researchers time to concentrate their efforts on the actual content.
I sort of disagree. For all these artefacts to be put on-line, they will need to be photographed, and at least a first level of cataloguing carried out. All of which will be taking money and people away from other work.
Perhaps what we need is more money given to the museums and more volunteers working in the archives doing this first level work.
Only then can we consider opening it up to the internet.