New mathematical cuneiform texts

This monograph presents in great detail a large number of both unpublished and previously published Babylonian mathematical texts in the cuneiform script. It is a continuation of the work A Remarkable Collection of Babylonian Mathematical Texts (Springer 2007) written by Jöran Friberg, the leading expert on Babylonian mathematics. Focussing on the big picture, Friberg explores in this book several Late Babylonian arithmetical and metro-mathematical table texts from the sites of Babylon, Uruk and Sippar, collections of mathematical exercises from four Old Babylonian sites, as well as a new text from Early Dynastic/Early Sargonic Umma, which is the oldest known collection of mathematical exercises. A table of reciprocals from the end of the third millennium BC, differing radically from well-documented but younger tables of reciprocals from the Neo-Sumerian and Old-Babylonian periods, as well as a fragment of a Neo-Sumerian clay tablet showing a new type of a labyrinth are also discussed. The material is presented in the form of photos, hand copies, transliterations and translations, accompanied by exhaustive explanations. The previously unpublished mathematical cuneiform texts presented in this book were discovered by Farouk Al-Rawi, who also made numerous beautiful hand copies of most of the clay tablets. Historians of mathematics and the Mesopotamian civilization, linguists and those interested in ancient labyrinths will find New Mathematical Cuneiform Texts particularly valuable. The book contains many texts of previously unknown types and material that is not available elsewhere

Gilgamesh dreams of Enkidu: An Old Babylonian tablet of Gilgamesh in the Suleimaniyah Museum

This article presents an Old Babylonian fragment of the Epic of Gilgamesh now in the Suleimaniyah Museum. The passage of text preserved on it describes how Gilgamesh dreams of the coming of the wild man Enkidu. It has many points in common with other versions of the same episode, from both the second and the first millennium. The article compares the various versions of the passage for similarities and differences, and concludes that the Suleimaniyah fragment is one more witness to an Old Babylonian poem of Gilgamesh that had considerable currency in southern Babylonia