Administrative Reality and Scribal Apparatus in the Middle Babylonian Period, with Accompanying TextsHT Drew Longacre at the OTTC Blog. He suggests that the book "might be of interest for early Israelite/Judahite scribalism." I hope he will say more about this.Series:
Harvard Semitic Monographs, Volume: 67Author: Jonathan S. Tenney
This book provides editions of 325 Akkadian texts, reconstructs aspects of the political recording process, and presents evidence of legal, epistolary, and administrative intertextuality at Kassite Nippur. Combining ideas from scholars in Assyriology and Political Science, it states that scribes working for political and institutional entities in Mesopotamia used abstractions of society, geography, processes, and even time, to establish bureaucratic order over a chaotic world. If such abstractions were employed in a bureaucratic environment that practiced post factum documentation, then administrative writing presents a reductionist "administrative reality" that affects the epistemological underpinnings of Assyriological investigations into Mesopotamian history and society.
Copyright Year: 2026
E-Book (PDF)
Availability: Published
ISBN: 978-90-04-46911-2
Publication: 29 Jul 2026
EUR €325.00Hardback
Availability: Published
ISBN: 978-90-04-46910-5
Publication: 27 Aug 2026
EUR €325.00
For PaleoJudaica posts on (later) Neo-Babylonian and Achaemenid scribes and scribal culture, see here, here, here, and here,
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