Thanks to Duane Smith I found out that the latest edition of ZA (Dec 2007) is online and all the articles are available as free downloads (all links are to the pdf’s that provide links to referenced articles that are available online). All the articles look really interesting; here they are:
““ by Wolfgang Schulze, Walther Sallaberger
The present article discusses the foundations of Sumerian morphosyntax in the light of a strongly typological, and – in parts – cognitive perspective…We will argue that the Sumerian constructional patterns have started from a dichotomic way of distinguishing center and periphery in an ergative way. This constructional pattern had a ‘syntactic’ value, as it allowed diathesis in order to encode a non-punctional, durative aspect. This aspect construction showed up as an antipassive that later became grammaticalized as an expression of non-past constructions. This ‘tense-split’, typical for a number of adjacent linguistic areas, ended up in the grammaticalization of the antipassive as an accusative construction (‘marû-construction’), whereas the past domain remained strongly ergative (‘
-construction’). The accusative pattern then again allowed a diathesis which now was a passive in nature.
“ by Piotr Steinkeller
An examination of the data pertaining to the Å imaÅ¡kian Yabrat (Ebarat) reveals that this Iranian ruler controlled, during the later phase of the Ur III period, a powerful state in central Iran. It appears that Yabrat’s influence extended to the neighboring state of AnÅ¡an, which may even have been his political dependency. A close and dependent ally of the House of Ur until the reign of Ibbi-Suen, Yabrat subsequently became a major threat to Babylonia. The article seeks to reconstruct the history of the interactions between Yabrat and the Ur III state, and to provide an improved understanding of Å imaÅ¡ki as a political and geographic phenomenon. The question of the historicity of the so-called “ŠimaÅ¡- kian King List†is also considered.
This article presents editions of KBo. 36, 47 and KBo. 42, 116, both fragments of Akkadian omens found in HattuÅ¡a. KBo. 42, 116 is identified as a fragment of Å¡umma immeru omens. KBo. 36, 47 obverse is demonstrated to be an Akkadian Å¡umma immeru omen text almost identical to the Emar Å¡umma immeru recension. Its reverse is proven to be an Akkadian recension of Å¡umma Älu omens that can be identified with Tablet 41 of the canonical Å¡umma Älu series. This invites us to discuss the textual history of these omen genres and their transmission to the so-called Western Periphery.
“ by Kathleen Abraham, Jacob Klein
A new ‘barrel cylinder’ fragment of Sargon II, from an unknown provenance, is published herein. The fragment yields a summary report of events from Sargon’s reign up to his eleventh palû, in a geographical rather than in a chronological order. The 14 preserved lines are written in a NB ductus, closely resembling and partly overlapping those of the barrel cylinder fragment ND 3411 from Nimrud. The text of the new fragment is reconstructed and studied here with the help of the corresponding lines in the above Nimrud fragment, the Khorsabad cylinders and a cylinder fragment from Nineveh (K 1660).
“ by Aage Westenholz
In this article, collations of the 13 Graeco-Babyloniaca texts presently in the British Museum, as well as photographs of nine of these, are offered; the cultural Sitz im Leben of the Graeco-Babyloniaca is examined; a phonological analysis of Akkadian and Sumerian in Greek transcription is attempted; and M. Geller’s thesis of a survival of the cuneiform tradition into the third century A. D. is critically discussed. Thus, the debate about these texts in this journal is continued.
