Ashurbanipal Library and Torah

Discussion about the Hebrew Bible, Septuagint, pseudepigrapha, Philo, Josephus, Talmud, Dead Sea Scrolls, archaeology, etc.
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LukeSpeed
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Joined: Wed Aug 25, 2021 4:00 am

Ashurbanipal Library and Torah

Post by LukeSpeed »

I visited the British Museum yesterday, and was amazed by the Ashurbanipal Library tablet collection. I can't believe I hadn't heard of it sooner!

I'm now looking for scholars, analysis, or resources that study similarity or overlap between the Torah (or really anything on earlyjewishwritings) and the 32,000 clay tablets found at the Ashurbanipal Library, which had all been buried since 652BCE until the 1900's.

There's the Ashurbanipal Library Project website, but I'm struggling to even find a good translation resource for the tablets.

This is the project website:

http://oracc.iaas.upenn.edu/asbp/pager

I feel like "I must be missing something" so any words of guidance would be welcome!
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Peter Kirby
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Re: Ashurbanipal Library and Torah

Post by Peter Kirby »

LukeSpeed wrote: Wed Aug 25, 2021 4:42 am I visited the British Museum yesterday, and was amazed by the Ashurbanipal Library tablet collection. I can't believe I hadn't heard of it sooner!

I'm now looking for scholars, analysis, or resources that study similarity or overlap between the Torah (or really anything on earlyjewishwritings) and the 32,000 clay tablets found at the Ashurbanipal Library, which had all been buried since 652BCE until the 1900's.

There's the Ashurbanipal Library Project website, but I'm struggling to even find a good translation resource for the tablets.

This is the project website:

http://oracc.iaas.upenn.edu/asbp/pager

I feel like "I must be missing something" so any words of guidance would be welcome!
I'm also curious to see if anyone knows anything.

Welcome to the forum!
yakovzutolmai
Posts: 296
Joined: Mon May 17, 2021 6:03 am

Re: Ashurbanipal Library and Torah

Post by yakovzutolmai »

LukeSpeed wrote: Wed Aug 25, 2021 4:42 am I visited the British Museum yesterday, and was amazed by the Ashurbanipal Library tablet collection. I can't believe I hadn't heard of it sooner!

I'm now looking for scholars, analysis, or resources that study similarity or overlap between the Torah (or really anything on earlyjewishwritings) and the 32,000 clay tablets found at the Ashurbanipal Library, which had all been buried since 652BCE until the 1900's.

There's the Ashurbanipal Library Project website, but I'm struggling to even find a good translation resource for the tablets.

This is the project website:

http://oracc.iaas.upenn.edu/asbp/pager

I feel like "I must be missing something" so any words of guidance would be welcome!
Hello.

I've read that the lack of effort to translate this library is one of the great tragedies of modern antiquity studies. My understanding is that someone could expect substantially interesting revelations to come from them. The library is both vast and understudied. As you have said, with large sections never translated.

I personally wonder about the Assyrian formal religion. Other than the apparent accession to different Babylonian cults, not much is known about Assyrian religion.

I would have expect it to be something of a bridge between Ugaritic texts and later Jewish and Syrian religions. Perhaps finding pure "Elohist" language in them. I wonder.
LukeSpeed
Posts: 2
Joined: Wed Aug 25, 2021 4:00 am

Re: Ashurbanipal Library and Torah

Post by LukeSpeed »

Thank you for your replies, and welcoming me to the forum Peter!

Although the lack of translation and analsys is frustrating for us, its existence does give me a huge hope for the future. I'm sure you're right yakovzutolmai, one day the bridges will all be clear!
StephenGoranson
Posts: 2312
Joined: Thu Apr 02, 2015 2:10 am

Re: Ashurbanipal Library and Torah

Post by StephenGoranson »

At JSTOR.org a search for the British Museum’s “Ashurbanipal Library Project” returns some publications, including:

The Royal Libraries of Nineveh: New Evidence for King Ashurbanipal's Tablet Collecting
Journal Article
Grant Frame, A. R. George
Iraq, Vol. 67, No. 1, Nineveh. Papers of the 49th Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale, Part Two (Spring, 2005), pp. 265-284

The British Museum's Ashurbanipal Library Project
Journal Article
Jeanette C. Fincke
Iraq, Vol. 66, Nineveh. Papers of the 49th Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale, Part One (2004), pp. 55-60

From ‘Ashurbanipal’s Library’ and the ‘stream of tradition’ to new approaches to cuneiform scholarship
Book Chapter
Eleanor Robson
From: Ancient Knowledge Networks: A Social Geography of Cuneiform Scholarship in First-Millennium Assyria and Babylonia, UCL Press (2019)
StephenGoranson
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Joined: Thu Apr 02, 2015 2:10 am

Re: Ashurbanipal Library and Torah

Post by StephenGoranson »

Notice of a zoom lecture:

We are happy to inform you that the first session of the workshop
series ‘International Perspectives on the First Millennium BCE’
(IPFM), will take place next Thursday, 23 September, at 17.00 CEST.

John Rogers (Swansea University) will present ‘Aššurbanipal, Gyges,
Psamtik I, and international relations in the seventh-century BCE Near
East’ for discussion. If you would like to join, please get in touch
at 1stmillenniumbce@gmail.com, and we will send Zoom details to you.

IPFM seeks to be a platform for informal, international, and
interdisciplinary discussion of research questions which benefit from
the knowledge and expertise of people in multiple disciplines who
study the ancient world until Alexander. IPFM especially wants to be
an arena for early career researchers to ‘road-test’ initial ideas and
thoughts in a friendly and useful environment without a huge time
commitment.

Our initial set of seminars, which focus on a short presentation and
plenty of discussion, will run bi-weekly until 16 December. If you
would be interested in presenting an aspect of your research or an
idea you are thinking about for discussion, we still have a couple of
slots available: please get in touch informally at
1stmillenniumbce@gmail.com.
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