The Seafaring Merchants of Ur

Abstract

AFTER MANY YEARS of waiting, Assyriologists are now given the opportunity to study the numerous documents of the Larsa period excavated by C. L. Woolley in Ur (1922-1934). With its more than 880 tablets, this volume is bound to become one of the most important publications for those few Assyriologists who strive for integration and a synthesis of the immense amount of socio-economic data of the Old-Babylonian period pouring forth every year from the cuneiform sources. The present collection, which contains very little extraneous material,' is offered by Dr. H. H. Figulla in copies which read well and is provided by him with an introduction of 80 pages containing: Descriptive Catalogue, Personal Names, Divine Names, Select Vocabulary, etc. The list of personal names is in spite of minor shortcomings 2 indispensable for the understanding of the text material because the shortsighted and antiquated publication policy of the excavator deprives the reader of that essential source of information which becomes available only by studying, as a unit, the tablets found together in so-called caches, as of private persons, or in specific rooms of (public) buildings. Whoever intends to investigate e. g. a specific aspect of the economic life of Ur, has to use the list of personal names to reconstruct these archives and to collect

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