Babylonian Cuneiform Texts

As well as the Babylonian Chronicles and the Astronomical Diaries, over 1,500 legal, scholarly and religious cuneiform documents have survived from the Hellenistic and early Parthian period.  The following list contains all the documents which can be dated exactly or approximately within this period, and which are available online in English translation. To provide a chronological framework, the names of the Macedonian/Seleucid rulers are shown within the list, at the point where they first appear in the texts. Some excerpts from the "Goal Year Texts" have also been included, where they help to clarify the chronology ( for more details, see the analysis by G.R.F. Assar ).

Most of the texts have been catalogued by  CDLI ( Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative ), and the CDLI number ( starting with P ) is shown in the first column of each line.  Click on this to see the text and translation. Where this is not available, clicking on the first column of the line will take you a list of links rather than directly to the translation.  For more information about the translations, see below.

Unless otherwise stated, all the cuneiform tablets were found in Uruk.   There is a good general introduction to the texts from Uruk by Ph.Clancier, "Cuneiform Culture's Last Guardians" ( academia.edu ).

Seleucid Kings:   Seleucus I ,    Antiochus I ,    Antiochus II ,    Seleucus II ,    Seleucus III ,    Antiochus III ,    Seleucus IV ,    Antiochus IV ,    Antiochus V ,    Demetrius I ,    Alexander Balas ,    Demetrius II ,    Antiochus VII

* Note : G.R.F. Assar, in "The Date of the Battle at the River Lycus" ( academia.edu ), has demonstrated that that the date at the end of SBH 25 should be read as year 163 S.E., not year 162. This enables him to calculate that the period of renewed Seleucid rule in Babylonia lasted from July 130 to some time between May and November 129 B.C.   ↑

Links to other translations

Most of the translations have been provided online by various  ORACC projects:     HBTIN   ( Hellenistic Babylonia: Texts, Images and Names )  ,   ADART 6   ( Goal Year Texts )  ,   BLMS   ( Bilinguals in Late Mesopotamian Scholarship )  ,   CCPo   ( Cuneiform Commentaries Project )  ,   GKAB     ( The Geography of Knowledge in Assyria and Babylonia )   ,   and SelBI   ( Seleucid Building Inscriptions  ).

There are also various other collections of translations available online.  The following have been included in this list:

Clay	A.T.Clay,   "Legal Documents from Erech, dated in the Seleucid Era"	archive.org
CM 12	R. Wallenfels,   "Seleucid Archival Texts in the Harvard Semitic Museum"	archive.org
Corò	P.Corò,   "Seleucid Tablets from Uruk in the British Museum"	PDF
Horoscope	F. Rochberg,   "Babylonian Horoscopes"	archive.org
Jursa	M. Jursa,   " Agricultural Management, Tax Farming and Banking: Aspects of Entrepreneurial Activity in Babylonia"	academia.edu
Land	R.J. van der Spek,   "Land ownership in Babylonian Cuneiform Documents", pp.201-245	academia.edu
Monerie	J.Monerie,   "More than a Workman? The case of the ēpeš dulli tīdi ša bīt ilāni from Hellenistic Uruk", App. I	academia.edu
Nippur	R.J. van der Spek,   "Nippur, Sippar, and Larsa in the Hellenistic Period", Appendix II	academia.edu
Parth	R.J. van der Spek,   "Cuneiform Documents on Parthian History: the Rahimesu Archive"	academia.edu
Stolper	M.W. Stolper,   "Late Achaemenid, Early Macedonian, and Early Seleucid Records of Deposit and Related Texts"	academia.edu
Temple	R.J. van der Spek,   "The Babylonian Temple during the Macedonian and Parthian Domination	academia.edu

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