Books by Cornelia Wunsch
The scribes who wrote the documents in the Judaean archive were-to judge by their names, especial... more The scribes who wrote the documents in the Judaean archive were-to judge by their names, especially when a family name is used-native Babylonians. 218 Their work shows that they had mastered the cuneiform script beyond elementary level. Scribal art was taught at temple schools as excavations show: practice and exam tablets have been found, e.g., at the Nabû-ša-ḫarê temple in Babylon and elsewhere. 219 This allowed the sons of priestly families access to the career of scribe. Furthermore, there are many examples of businessmen who also occasionally wrote contracts. We have reason to believe that there were some people who could at least read and, with some effort, were able to write the rare record when there was no professional scribe available. 220 The art of writing could also be transmitted from father to son, as one tablet 218 This is also true for the scribe of the marriage contract A1, although this is challenged by the editor who believes he has a West Semitic name (Abraham 2005-2006: 215) but there is another possible reading of the name. Hackl 2017: 136, having studied the language of these texts in depth, comes to the conclusion that 'their patronyms and sometimes also (well-known) family or clan names suggest that they were indeed members of Babylonian families and thus of Babylonian extraction.' 219 See Gesche 2000. She reconstructed the curriculum and divided it into two levels, primary and advanced (both based on the elementary knowlege of cuneiform), followed, in the case of professionals and scholars, by higher education (see the diagram on p. 210). In the introductory stage future scribes started to get used to clay and reed by drawing single horizonal and vertical wedges, winkelhaken, signs composed of two to four wedges, then more complex signs. They also copied some examples of 'canonical' syllabary (S a) and vocabulary (S b A, S b) B) lists, followed by the god list Anum and ur 5-ra = ḫubullum. Most of the latter was already standardized during the Old-Babylonian period (pp. 66-80). In this way, the basic legal concepts were introduced. Non-standard texts include lists of personal names and their basic parts, e.g., verbal forms. It is observed that teachers preferred to introduce names in their unabriged form, even when a name does not occur in contemporary texts (pp. 81-102). This certainly improved the scribe's knowledge of Babylonian name forms and helped to streamline their orthography. In addition, the primary level also covered mathematical lists, measures and weights, date formulas, place names, administrative records, and letters, also a few proverbs and literary texts (pp. 136-152). Recently Frazer (2013) published a school text presumably from Nippur (UM 29-16-215(+)29-16-216.) It contains the typical mix of topics but in rev. ii (p. 179, middle column upper part ll. 8´-11´) there appear, immediately preceding the king's name Nazi-Maruttaš and its interpretation as Ṣil-Ninurta, after a few entirely broken lines, the remnants i]a-a-ma (or part of it), but never with a determinative in front. The restoration of a Yahwistic name seems obvious but as the text lacks a date it can be dated only vaguely to the Achaemenid period. Even if this may be proof for the introduction of an orthography for Hebrew names into the cuneiform curriculum, the evidence from our texts suggests that such a standardization by no means had happened before these texts were written. 220 See, e.g., the case of Ṭābia from the Nūr-Sîn family: He used to employ professional scribes for his business records but wrote himself when it came to giving instructions to his
![Research paper thumbnail of (2019) Fault, Responsibility and Administrative Law in Late Babylonian Legal Texts [with F. R. Magdalene and B. Wells]](https://a.academia-assets.com/images/blank-paper.jpg)
(2019) Fault, Responsibility and Administrative Law in Late Babylonian Legal Texts [with F. R. Magdalene and B. Wells]
Eisenbrauns/Pennsylvania State University Press , 2019
In many ways, this book is about a single clause found in Neo-Babylonian administrative and judic... more In many ways, this book is about a single clause found in Neo-Babylonian administrative and judicial texts. The phrase begins with the word ḫīṭu (“sin, crime, guilt, punishment”) and can be translated he will be guilty (of an offense) against the king (or other person named in the clause). It is found in a substantial number of administrative and judicial texts written from the time of the Neo-Babylonian and Persian empires. This book collects 96 such texts and offers editions of 91 of them. In other ways, the book is about much more than this single clause because of the far-reaching legal nature and consequences of the clause. First, their administrative context seems a regular and compelling feature. Second, all such documents involve some delegation of responsibility and assign legal responsibility in the case of a breach. Third, the texts point of the court which will hear the matter of a breach. Fourth, the texts reflect that the administrative bureaucracy underlying them is a more complex, systematized, and rational system than had previously been recognized. These texts appeared, consequently, to be generated against the background of a form of early administrative law—not in the modern sense of this legal phrase, but nonetheless, a developing body of substantive law based upon violations to the administrative system. This is the principal thesis that the book seeks to demonstrate in seven chapters.
(2014) Documents of Judean Exiles and West Semites in Babylonia in the Collection of David Sofer
(2003) Urkunden zum Ehe-, Vermögens- und Erbrecht aus verschiedenen neubabylonischen Archiven
http://dlib.nyu.edu/ancientworld/books/isaw_islet000002/1, Jan 1, 2003
(2000) Das Egibi-Archiv. 1. Die Felder und Gärten
The archive of the Egibi family from the 6th cent. BC originates from Babylon and covers a time s... more The archive of the Egibi family from the 6th cent. BC originates from Babylon and covers a time span of more than 100 years and five generations. It is known as the largest and most important private archive from the Neo-Babylonian period.
Although nearly 800 tablets were already published in cuneiform copies by the end of the 19th century, no comprehensive text edition and study of the archive has been completed so far. This book presents the first step and focuses on the purchase of land (date orchards and arable land) by the Egibi family.
About 240 records (property titles and related debt notes, receipts, field plans etc.) form the core of the archive and are closely interrelated with other aspects of the family’s business. Nearly half of them have not been published before. The book provides transliterations and translations of all these texts, as well as copies of new material including hitherto unknown sealings of published tablets.
The study shows how the Egibi family managed to built up considerable wealth in real estate over a relatively short period of time, it assesses the impacts of inheritance and marriages and of the way the estates were managed, and it examines the role that real estate played as an outlet for investment
(1993) Die Urkunden des babylonischen Geschäftsmannes Iddin-Marduk
Edited books by Cornelia Wunsch
(2004) Creating Economic Order: Record-keeping, Standardization, and the Development of Accounting in the Ancient Near East
(2002) Mining the Archives: Festschrift for Christopher Walker on the Occasion of His 60th Birthday, 4 October 2002
Inhalt:
Heather D. Baker, Approaches to Akkadian Name-Giving in First-Millennium B.C. Mesopota... more Inhalt:
Heather D. Baker, Approaches to Akkadian Name-Giving in First-Millennium B.C. Mesopotamia
Tom Boiy, The “Accession Year” in the Late Achaemenid and Early Hellenistic Period
John P. Britton, Remarks on BM 37361
David Brown, The Level of the Euphrates
Rocío Da Riva, Schafe, die „aus den Häusern“ herbeigeführt wurden: BM 78910 und die Rolle des privaten Spenders (ka¯ribu) im neubabylonischen Sippar
Erica Ehrenberg, The Kassite Cross Revisited
Claudia Fischer, Ur-gigir, a Sumerian Cosmopolitan
Anne Goddeeris, An Adoption Document from the Kisurra Collection in the British Museum
Nils P. Heeßel, Ein neubabylonisches Rezept zur Berauschung und Ausnüchterung
Michael Jursa, Florilegium babyloniacum: Neue Texte aus hellenistischer und spätachämenidischer Zeit
Ulla Koch-Westenholz, Old Babylonian Extispicy Reports
Frans van Koppen, Redeeming a Father’s Seal
John MacGinnis Working in Elam
Christa Müller-Kessler, A Charm Against Demons of Time (with an Appendix by W.G. Lambert)
Jamie R. Novotny, A Note on the Akitu-House at Harran
Rosel Pientka-Hinz, Ein spätaltbabylonischer Kaufvertrag aus Babylon
Frances S. Reynolds, Describing the Body of a God
Seth Richardson, Ewe Should Be So Lucky: Extispicy Reports and Everyday Life
Eleanor Robson, Guaranteed Genuine Originals: The Plimpton Collection and the Early History of Mathematical Assyriology
John M. Steele, Some Lunar Ephemerides and Related Texts from Babylon
Caroline Waerzeggers, Endogamy in Mesopotamia in the Neo-Babylonian Period
Michaela Weszeli, Du sollst nicht darüber spotten: eine Abschrift der 10. Tafel von úru àm.ma.ir.ra.bi
Cornelia Wunsch, „Du hast meinen Sohn geschlagen!“
Bibliography of C.B.F. Walker, Indices
"
(1994) XXV. Deutscher Orientalistentag: vom 8. bis 13. 4. 1991 in München: Vorträge im Auftrag der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft
(2023) Aminah Fadhil Al-Bayati, The Archive of Zababa-šarru-uṣur (Babylonische Archive, vol. 8) will be available in July 2023
Aminah Fadhil Al-Bayati, The Archive of Zababa-šarru-uṣur (Babylonische Archive, vol. 8)
will be available in July 2023
Reviews by Cornelia Wunsch
Articles & Chapters by Cornelia Wunsch
(2025) On Personal Misconduct, Injunctions and Deterrents. With Andrea Seri
Archiv für Orientforschung 56, 167-184, 2025
The complex dynamics between deterrent and punishment and the way they function within the instit... more The complex dynamics between deterrent and punishment and the way they function within the institutional and domes-
tic setting have been little studied in Assyriology,1 despite the rich tradition of law collections and archival documents.
This article aims at contributing to the understanding of that problem during the Neo- and Late Babylonian periods. For
such purpose, we analyse types of deterrents of various strength, such as capital punishment, mutilation of nose and ears,
shaming body marks and economic penalties. All the examples known to us have in common the fact that they contain ad-
monitions rather than rulings. That is to say, the tablets include deterrents to make potential culprits aware of the punish-
ment they will face if they do not comply with the injunction. In contrast, no tablet from our corpus records the actual act
of administering punishment. The extant documents were issued to inform the potential transgressor officially about the
punishment to be inflicted. This communicative purpose may explain why deterrents were written down, whereas records
pertaining to actual implementation of punishments are scarce. Evidence of communication prior to penalty reveals the
existence of a system operating logically, with little room – despite its harshness – for the arbitrariness of the unexpected.
This article maintains that the term "semi-free" for describing the personal status of individual... more This article maintains that the term "semi-free" for describing the personal status of individuals and population groups in ancient Mesopotamia is overused and underexplained. As long as this label is attached to any non-slave who happens to be burdened with duties of whatever kind, it remains a hollow cliché. It was the free, non-slave individual who was subjected to taxes and corvée, even if he was of high social standing. Declaring dependent groups, such as non-priestly temple personnel or foreign deportees settled on royal land, to be "semi-free," despite being qualified to own and bequeath property, live in families, and perform state duties, limits the number of "really free" individuals considerably, basically, to male heads of wealthy households and noble descent only. Even their sons, wives, and daughters experienced diminished freedom of whatever fraction one wishes to chooseeven more so their underlings and the dependents of state and temple households. Manumission records are the key to our understanding of personal status, as they spell out the steps necessary for status change and, thereby, the features pertaining to these steps. Relying on the Neo-Babylonian archives, this article distinguishes between several types of manumission, specifically the redemption and oblation type. Based on insights into the mechanics of these procedures, this article argues that the place of an individual within a household and his relation to the head of this household were additional parameters, besides the legal status (slave vs. non-slave), that defined his social standing.
L’empreinte des empires au Proche-Orient ancien Philippe, Clancier - Julien, Monerie (eds.) : Volume d’hommage offert à Francis Joannès, 2023
Oxford : Archaeopress Archaeology, 278-285
Une partie du matériel cunéiforme du Docteur Georges ... more Oxford : Archaeopress Archaeology, 278-285
Une partie du matériel cunéiforme du Docteur Georges Goreux qui a légué sa collection à la Belgique est conservée aux Musées royaux d'Art et d'Histoire, à Bruxelles. Parmi ces objets, le présent texte (O.4981, Figures 1 et 2) représente un billet à ordre pour de l'orge émis à Bīt-Kurbannu et daté du règne de Darius I er. Il appartient aux archives centrées sur Zababa-šarru-uṣur, l'intendant du domaine du prince héritier.
Altorientalische Forschungen, 2023
This paper discusses a small dossier of four documents concerning a house that stood in Neo-Babyl... more This paper discusses a small dossier of four documents concerning a house that stood in Neo-Babylonian Uruk. These documents offer a rare opportunity to follow the history of one property and one neighborhood over a period of half a century. Apart from supplying unique long-term data on property prices in Uruk, the dossier provides insight into various social and political changes that shaped Uruk's social and urban structures in the late seventh and early sixth centuries BC. In particular, it contributes to the evidence concerning a dramatic purge of Uruk elites that took place in the middle of Nebuchadnezzar II's reign.
Migration und Kulturtransfer ed. N. Nebes and I. Gerlach, 2023
The group of documents from the Babylonian hinterland presented here allows insights into the liv... more The group of documents from the Babylonian hinterland presented here allows insights into the lives of descendants of deported Judeans from the time of the Neo-Babylonian Empire and the first Achaemenid rulers. They were assigned land that was under royal administration and burdened with rent and tax payments as well as service obligations. They lived in ethnically relatively homogeneous settlements in the neighbourhood of other exiled populations with whom contacts existed. The administration was predominantly staffed by Babylonians. The documents presented here concern legal disputes for which either evidence was sought or which, after appropriate examination, were decided or dismissed for lack of it at the local level. These examples are of great legal historical interest, primarily for the Babylonian tradition. However, they also show that exiles of all origins came into contact with this legal system, and that it may have had a great influence on further developments (e.g., also the Jewish tradition). The current great progress in the publication and evaluation of cuneiform sources from the late period contributes to this understanding.
Feliu Mateu, L, Adelina Millet Albà, and Jordi Vidal Palomino (eds.) «Sentido de un empeño»: homenatge a Gregorio del Olmo Lete (Barcino monographica orientalia 6), 2021
ISBN 978-84-9168-362-9
In: A Companion to the Achaemenid Persian Empire (ed. B. Jacobs, R .Rollinger), vol. 2. Wiley: 2021: pp.993–1004, 2021
Temple Economy
Babylonian temples were the cultic focus and economic centers for their regions... more Temple Economy
Babylonian temples were the cultic focus and economic centers for their regions. Far from being autonomous, self-sufficient institutions operating an autarkic redistributive system (as was often assumed), the temples of the sixth and early fifth centuries BCE interacted with and depended on the outside economy. The general conditions have been summarized as a "felicitous combination of ecological, demographic, socioeconomic and political factors" that brought about a growing economy and increasing productivity in agriculture with frequently market-oriented production where a substantial part of the urban population worked in non-agrarian occupations and where a high degree of labor specialization prevailed in a largely monetized economy (Jursa 2010: pp. 768, 815). The temples in the area along the Euphrates kept in regular contact, traded in staple goods and craft products, and "constituted one fairly well-integrated economic space," while the hinterland of the temples and their cities "was a zone of intensive, but essentially local, interaction" (Jursa 2010: p. 138 f). The main sanctuary was Esagil of Babylon, dedicated to Marduk, the head of the Babylonian pantheon, which played a supreme role and which collected taxes from the other temples, ultimately for the benefit of the king, amounting to 3.5% of the agricultural income in the case of the Eanna of Uruk (Jursa 2010: pp. 68-70).
Archiv für Orientforschung, 2021
Fingernail marks are easily recognizable features on clay tablets. They appear on a limited numbe... more Fingernail marks are easily recognizable features on clay tablets. They appear on a limited number of contract types and differ in their appearance. The way they are impressed, their number, and their position on the edges clearly underly cer- tain rules that have changed over time. The presence or absence of such marks depends on the contents of the tablets and allows to determine the function of the persons who left these impressions and whose names are recorded in the pertaining captions. Nail marks, therefore, allow by their presence, number, shape, and position for a rough classification and dating of tablets. This paper considers specimens from Babylonia dated to the eighth to fifth centuries BC.
mu-zu an-za3-še3 kur-ur2-še3 ḫe2-ĝal2. Altorientalistische Studien zu Ehren von Konrad Volk Herausgegeben von Jessica Baldwin und Jana Matuszak unter Mitarbeit von Manuel Ceccarelli, 2020
mu-zu an-za3-še3 kur-ur 2-še 3 ḫe 2-£al 2 .
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Books by Cornelia Wunsch
Although nearly 800 tablets were already published in cuneiform copies by the end of the 19th century, no comprehensive text edition and study of the archive has been completed so far. This book presents the first step and focuses on the purchase of land (date orchards and arable land) by the Egibi family.
About 240 records (property titles and related debt notes, receipts, field plans etc.) form the core of the archive and are closely interrelated with other aspects of the family’s business. Nearly half of them have not been published before. The book provides transliterations and translations of all these texts, as well as copies of new material including hitherto unknown sealings of published tablets.
The study shows how the Egibi family managed to built up considerable wealth in real estate over a relatively short period of time, it assesses the impacts of inheritance and marriages and of the way the estates were managed, and it examines the role that real estate played as an outlet for investment
Edited books by Cornelia Wunsch
Heather D. Baker, Approaches to Akkadian Name-Giving in First-Millennium B.C. Mesopotamia
Tom Boiy, The “Accession Year” in the Late Achaemenid and Early Hellenistic Period
John P. Britton, Remarks on BM 37361
David Brown, The Level of the Euphrates
Rocío Da Riva, Schafe, die „aus den Häusern“ herbeigeführt wurden: BM 78910 und die Rolle des privaten Spenders (ka¯ribu) im neubabylonischen Sippar
Erica Ehrenberg, The Kassite Cross Revisited
Claudia Fischer, Ur-gigir, a Sumerian Cosmopolitan
Anne Goddeeris, An Adoption Document from the Kisurra Collection in the British Museum
Nils P. Heeßel, Ein neubabylonisches Rezept zur Berauschung und Ausnüchterung
Michael Jursa, Florilegium babyloniacum: Neue Texte aus hellenistischer und spätachämenidischer Zeit
Ulla Koch-Westenholz, Old Babylonian Extispicy Reports
Frans van Koppen, Redeeming a Father’s Seal
John MacGinnis Working in Elam
Christa Müller-Kessler, A Charm Against Demons of Time (with an Appendix by W.G. Lambert)
Jamie R. Novotny, A Note on the Akitu-House at Harran
Rosel Pientka-Hinz, Ein spätaltbabylonischer Kaufvertrag aus Babylon
Frances S. Reynolds, Describing the Body of a God
Seth Richardson, Ewe Should Be So Lucky: Extispicy Reports and Everyday Life
Eleanor Robson, Guaranteed Genuine Originals: The Plimpton Collection and the Early History of Mathematical Assyriology
John M. Steele, Some Lunar Ephemerides and Related Texts from Babylon
Caroline Waerzeggers, Endogamy in Mesopotamia in the Neo-Babylonian Period
Michaela Weszeli, Du sollst nicht darüber spotten: eine Abschrift der 10. Tafel von úru àm.ma.ir.ra.bi
Cornelia Wunsch, „Du hast meinen Sohn geschlagen!“
Bibliography of C.B.F. Walker, Indices
"
Reviews by Cornelia Wunsch
Articles & Chapters by Cornelia Wunsch
tic setting have been little studied in Assyriology,1 despite the rich tradition of law collections and archival documents.
This article aims at contributing to the understanding of that problem during the Neo- and Late Babylonian periods. For
such purpose, we analyse types of deterrents of various strength, such as capital punishment, mutilation of nose and ears,
shaming body marks and economic penalties. All the examples known to us have in common the fact that they contain ad-
monitions rather than rulings. That is to say, the tablets include deterrents to make potential culprits aware of the punish-
ment they will face if they do not comply with the injunction. In contrast, no tablet from our corpus records the actual act
of administering punishment. The extant documents were issued to inform the potential transgressor officially about the
punishment to be inflicted. This communicative purpose may explain why deterrents were written down, whereas records
pertaining to actual implementation of punishments are scarce. Evidence of communication prior to penalty reveals the
existence of a system operating logically, with little room – despite its harshness – for the arbitrariness of the unexpected.
Une partie du matériel cunéiforme du Docteur Georges Goreux qui a légué sa collection à la Belgique est conservée aux Musées royaux d'Art et d'Histoire, à Bruxelles. Parmi ces objets, le présent texte (O.4981, Figures 1 et 2) représente un billet à ordre pour de l'orge émis à Bīt-Kurbannu et daté du règne de Darius I er. Il appartient aux archives centrées sur Zababa-šarru-uṣur, l'intendant du domaine du prince héritier.
Babylonian temples were the cultic focus and economic centers for their regions. Far from being autonomous, self-sufficient institutions operating an autarkic redistributive system (as was often assumed), the temples of the sixth and early fifth centuries BCE interacted with and depended on the outside economy. The general conditions have been summarized as a "felicitous combination of ecological, demographic, socioeconomic and political factors" that brought about a growing economy and increasing productivity in agriculture with frequently market-oriented production where a substantial part of the urban population worked in non-agrarian occupations and where a high degree of labor specialization prevailed in a largely monetized economy (Jursa 2010: pp. 768, 815). The temples in the area along the Euphrates kept in regular contact, traded in staple goods and craft products, and "constituted one fairly well-integrated economic space," while the hinterland of the temples and their cities "was a zone of intensive, but essentially local, interaction" (Jursa 2010: p. 138 f). The main sanctuary was Esagil of Babylon, dedicated to Marduk, the head of the Babylonian pantheon, which played a supreme role and which collected taxes from the other temples, ultimately for the benefit of the king, amounting to 3.5% of the agricultural income in the case of the Eanna of Uruk (Jursa 2010: pp. 68-70).