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July 8, 2006
One Good Reason to Publish Quickly
I ran across a picture the reverse of RS 1957.1 a tablet in Akkadian text found at Ugarit. The tablet is now in a private collection in Norway but was part of the Claremont Ras Shamra Tablets published by a team lead by Loren Fisher. The tablet is a decree from Initeššub, king of Carchemish concerning Amistamru, king of Ugarit's divorce of Piddu, the daughter of Benešena, king of the Amurru. As such it is an important tablet for anyone who is interested in the history and even more the political connection between the various states near the end of the Late Bronze Age. It is also part of a collection of texts that deal with this divorce.
While I am interested in this tablet for its content, something else struck me as I looked at the picture. That picture, part of which I will reproduce below and a dental cast of the tablet which is on my book shelf and also pictured below tell the story of what happens to a tablet when it falls into modern hands: a story that should be in and of itself reason to publish good photos and transcriptions as soon as possible after an artifact comes to light. It is likely not the best such example, but it is for me the example de jour.
As promised to the left is portion of the reverse of the tablet as seen on the Schøyen Collection website. You can see the whole reverse by taking this link. What you see is the middle of the left edge of the tablet. The text of the tablet ends just above the two deep horizontal lines. What you see is part of a cylinder seal impression of Initeššub. You'll be able to see this better in the photo of the cast below. Notice the roughly triangular area where a chip has broken off the tablet. If memory serves me, this is at the point where mounting table in the display came into contact with the table.
Now look at the photo of the cast make in 1970.
While my picture of the cast is not as good as the picture of the actual tablet, you can see that that chip was not missing from the tablet in 1970. There is some signs of wearing along that edge but the tablet is not chipped. I looked for other signs of damage since the cast was made a couldn't find anything that I was as sure about as the missing chip.
Now take a look in the center of the tablet notice the wearing the actually affects the lower part of the next to last line of the text proper and forms a oval extending down through the seal impression making part of it very hard to read. You'll be able to see this better on the photo of the tablet. I believe that this is the result of the way the tablet was stored, reverse down, perhaps in a desk draw, during the period between the time it was illegally excavated in 1957 and when the Institute acquired it in 1970.
The good news is that this modern damage did little to harm the readability of the text or the seal impression for that manner. The seal impression is known from other tablets although there is reason to think that the one on this tablet was once the clearest. But this damage sure could have done irrecoverable harm to any effort to read this text.
And in the case of KTU 4.193, which I reported on some time ago, such modern damager did make part of an already broken tablet unreadable. Luckily in the case of this small Ugarit tablet it was published before the irreparable damage was done.
Two morels for the slow of thought: First, publish fines before our modern hands have done them any harm. Second, be careful how these precious gifts from the past are handled.
Reference:
Posted by Duane Smith at July 8, 2006 6:26 PM | Read more on Ugarit |
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