Monday, Dr. Tohru Ozaki and his wife Atsuko Ozaki arrived from Japan to work in the museum collections. Being one of the top scholars in the field of Assyriology, the study of the languages and history of Mesopotamia, Dr. Ozaki is here to study cuneiform tablets.
During the Ozakis’s stay, I am partly responsible for hosting them, and was involved in setting up their work on the first day. Due to a language barrier, we encountered some difficulties. Tohru and Atsuko both speak some English and some German, but they don’t speak either of the languages fluently enough to carry on conversations with them. Interestingly, their language skills are much higher for reading—especially in German—since it is still rather important in the study of cuneiform. The vocabulary you encounter in this field of study, however, does not help in everyday conversation.
First, we got the Ozakis set up at a table in the one of the collections rooms. As they began their work, they managed to communicate to me that they needed to see all the tablets at once. We soon determined that there was not enough space in the room to do this well. After I told Karen, Chief Curator of Collections, about the problem, she agreed that we definitely had to provide the Ozakis with a bigger workplace. So we moved items and equipment to another collection room where we were able to set up five big tables for the tablets. This was not a very smooth start, but it shows the way things often go. You often encounter problems that you did not anticipate. The art, however, is to quickly come up with a good solution—and that we did.
Once set up, the Ozakis finally got started making transliterations of the tablets. And they really got started. I have rarely seen such persistent workers. When both of them are working, you almost never hear them talking, especially not about anything other than the tablets. Being asked about the great number of tablets, Tohru told me with sparkling eyes how happy he was to do this and grateful to be the first one to read these tablets after 4,000 years. It is great to see people who are so excited about their work, especially when they could have already retired.
They are working in collaboration with Dr. Marcel Sigrist, professor emeritus at École biblique et archéologique française de Jérusalem, (who arrived on Wednesday) on publishing a text edition of the tablets in the collections that are connected to the site of Iri-Saĝrig (its Sumerian name)/Āl-Šarrākī (the Akkadian name). The tablets date to the so-called Ur III period around 2000 BCE. The texts on them show a high degree of administration and formal bookkeeping. In Mesopotamia, the development of writing was both necessary for administration as well as its catalyst. Most texts from the site are ration distribution accounts for messengers, which nicely illustrates how people in this period tracked nearly everything. In many instances, the tablets also give the messenger’s specific task, for example, that he was supposed to deliver a letter to the king. Such information is especially valuable because it allows us to make further conclusions about the history of the period and the place. The great volume of tablets that mention Iri-Saĝrig/Āl-Šarrākī suggests that it has been an important city around 2000 BCE. The problem with the site, however, is that there have never been official excavations there. All tablets that might be from this place have been excavated by locals and then put on the market. It is not even sure where the site is located. Still, the tablets’ connection to it is certain because, for instance, each city used special month names in this period. And as you would expect from good record keeping, almost every text has a date.
Within the scholarly community there continues to be intense discussions on whether or not these tablets should be published. One side opposes publication when the provenance of artifacts is unclear and there are no excavated contexts. Yet, in my opinion, it does not make sense to deny the scholarly community access until things clear up. Perhaps they will never fully clear up. But why should we not do our best to preserve the artifacts, and then publish them—with the appropriate caveats—in order to determine what they have to offer and potentially broaden our understanding of Mesopotamian culture? My current view on this issue is influenced to some degree by an essay David Owen included in his text edition of Iri-Saĝrig/Āl-Šarrākī tablets in 2013.[1] The essay is called To Publish or Not to Publish—That Is the Question. If you are interested in the topic, I can really recommend it (although it is a bit lengthy in parts).
Check back for more next week!
[1] Owen, David I., Cuneiform Texts Primarily from Iri-Saĝrig / Āl-Šarrākī and the History of the Ur III Period. Volume I. Commentary and Indexes (NISABA 15), Bethesda 2013.