226 OLD BABYLONIAN INSCRIPTIONS 



ing of this work in the most cordial manner, I return my heartiest thanks and my 

 warm appreciation. 



No endeavor has been made to arrange Nos. 85-117 chronologically. Although 

 on palteographic evidence certain periods will be readily recognized in these texts, the 

 cuneiform material of the oldest phase of Babylonian history is still too scanty to allow 

 of a safe and definite discrimination. In order to present the monumental texts from 

 Nippur as completely as possible, the fragment of a large boundary stone now in Ber- 

 lin has found a place in these pages. For permitting its reproduction and for provid- 

 ing me with an excellent cast of the original, Prof. A. Erman, Director of the Royal 

 Museums, has my warmest thanks. I acknowledge likewise my obligations to Dr. 

 Talcott Williams of Philadelphia and to Rev. Dr. W. Hayes Ward of New York for 

 placing the fragment of a barrel cylinder of Marduk-shabik-zsrim and the impression 

 of a Babylonian seal cylinder respectively at my disposal. If the text of the latter had 

 been published before, Prof. Sayce would not have drawn his otherwise very natural 

 inference (The Academy, Sept. 7, 1895, p. 189) that the Hyksos god Sutekh belongs 

 to the language and people of the Cassites. 1 I do not need to offer an apology for in- 

 cluding the large fragment of Naram-Sin's inscription (No. 120), the only cuneiform 

 tablet found in Palestine (No. 147) and the first document of the time of Marduk- 

 ahe-irba, 2 a member of the Pashe dynasty, in the present series. In view of the great 

 importance which attaches to these monuments, a critical and trustworthy edition of 

 their inscriptions had become a real necessity. 



The little legend, No. 131, the translation of which is given in the " Table of 

 Contents," will prove of exceptional value to metrologists. At the same time I call 

 the attention of Assyriologists to the interesting text published on PI. 63, which was 

 restored from six fragments found among the contents of as many different boxes of 

 tablets. 



Nos. 124 and 126, which were copied during the time of the great earthquakes in 

 Constantinople, 1894, belong to the collection designated by me as Coll. Rifat Bey. 

 Together with several hundred other tablets they were presented to the Imperial Otto- 

 man Museum by Rifat Bey, military physician of a garrison stationed in the neigh- 



1 Prof. Sayce's view rests on Mr. Pinches's hasty transliteration made in connection with a brief visit to America in 

 1893 and published in Dr. Ward's Seal Cylinders and Other Oriental Seals (Handbook No. 12 of the Metropolitan 

 Museum of Art in New York), No. 391, where the Cassite god S/iugab (= Nergal, cf. Delitzseb, Eoss'der, p. 25, 1. 12) 

 was transliterated incorrectly by Shu-tah. I called Dr. Ward's attention to this apparent mistake and gave the correct 

 reading in my Assyriaca, p. 93, note. 



2 A boundary stone. The inscription has suffered much from its long exposure to the rain and sun of Babylo- 

 nia. The original, which the proprietor kindly permitted me to publish, is in Constantinople. The stone is so import- 

 ant that it should be purchased by an American or European museum. My complete transliteration and translation of 

 this text and of Nos. 151 and 152 will appear in one of the next numbers of Zeitscliriftjur Assyriologie. 



