electronic Babylonian Library Fragmentarium

electronic Babylonian Library Fragmentarium

In 1850, in the ruins of the South-West Palace at Nineveh (modern Mosul), in two rooms flanked by colossal reliefs of sages, the pioneer archaeologist Austen H. Layard found thousands of clay tablets inscribed with cuneiform script “broken into many fragments,” completely covering the floors. He anticipated that “years must elapse before the innumerable fragments can be put together and the inscriptions transcribed for the use of those who in England and elsewhere may engage in the study of the cuneiform character” (Layard, 1853: 347). After nearly 180 years the task envisioned by Layard is, despite the efforts of generations of cuneiform specialists, still far from finished. Bluntly put, there are still many fragments without texts and many texts without fragments.

The existence of a large mass of fragments vaguely described in museum catalogues by broad categories such as “religious,” “literary,” or “hymnic” has been a problem for cuneiformists since the inception of the field. The knowledge that there are many fragments “literally crying out for more joins” (Parpola, 1981: 126) haunts cuneiformists in their daily work. The goal of the Fragmentarium is to provide a lasting solution for the abiding problem of the fragmentariness of Babylonian literature. Thousands of fragments have been identified by members of the eBL project, and around 1,200 joins have been discovered, but many more remain to be found. By compiling transliterations of all fragments in museums’ cabinets, and enabling them to be searched in different, dynamic ways, it is hoped that cuneiform scholars will identify them and be able to use them. The Fragmentarium will eventually include fragments of Sumerian and Akkadian texts of all genres and periods, although presently special attention is paid to fragments of first-millennium non-administrative tablets, written in both Akkadian and Sumerian.

I. How to Cite

The editions contained in the Fragmentarium are mostly of a preliminary nature, and are intended to provide a research tool to aid in the reconstruction of Babylonian literature, rather than a finished, polished product. They are constantly updated, and will continue to be so for the foreseeable future.

In order to cite a certain edition, the following style is recommended:

K.5743, eBL edition (https://www.ebl.lmu.de/fragmentarium/K.5743), accessed 12/19/2024

The editions in the Fragmentarium are published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, which allows the non-commercial redistribution of material as long as appropriate credit is given.