Chapitre D'ouvrage Année : 2025

Erasing Signs and Lines on Old Assyrian Cuneiform Clay Tablets

Résumé

About 22,860 cuneiform clay tablets were excavated in the lower town of Kültepe, the ancient Kaneš, in Central Anatolia. The great majority date to the first half of the nineteenth century BCE and belong to Assyrian merchants originating from Aššur, in the north of Iraq. Their archives include letters, legal texts, and accounting documents. A significant part of the population of Aššur and Kaneš was literate, having either received a formal scribal education or learned to read, write, and count within their families. Many of the tablets found at Kültepe, probably written by the second group of literate people, show signs and even whole lines that have been erased. The analysis of various examples should make it possible to answer different questions. What techniques were used to erase one or more signs? Under what circumstances where the signs and words erased? Are there particular places to erase text on a tablet? Is this practice of erasing attested to by the texts themselves? This study on the practice of erasing signs and lines on clay tablets focuses on an Old Assyrian archive of a thousand tablets excavated in 1993 at Kültepe and belonging to Ali-ahum and his children Aššur-taklāku and Tariša.

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Dates et versions

halshs-05409334 , version 1 (13-12-2025)

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Cécile Michel. Erasing Signs and Lines on Old Assyrian Cuneiform Clay Tablets. Cammarosano, Michele. Erasing and Rewriting in Manuscript Cultures, 48, De Gruyter, pp.161-190, 2025, Studies in Manuscript Cultures, 9783111682983. ⟨10.1515/9783111682983-005⟩. ⟨halshs-05409334⟩
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