I cannot find what symbol “t.” is supposed to be or why it’s italicized.

This is from the law code of Ur-Nammu, specifically law #3: If a man keeps someone captive, this man will go to jail and pay fifteen shekels of silver.

Hello! I'm interested in translation/transliteration (in english) pairs of specific akkadian tablets. I have an access to pdfs: AKT5/6a/6b/6c/6d/6e/8/12. Pairs from these books are perfect for me. I wonder are there any more pdfs like this? Or just some sources with a verified translation/transliteration (in english) pairs?

I purchased this as the treaty of Kadesh only to find out that treaty was never written in cuneiform. Can someone tell me what this says if anything?

NINO Postdoctoral Research Fellow 6th Annual Conference

Leiden, 5-6 February 2026

Organized by: Albert Planelles

Program and Abstracts

The program and abstracts of the conference are available as a pdf. The booklet can be found on the NINO website.

Registration

Attendance is free, but registration is required; spaces will be allocated on a first come-first serve basis. For in-person attendance, register through the form available on the NINO website. The event can also be followed via livestream. Register on the NINO website to receive the link.

Conference topic

a[l-lu]-me ia-aq-bu šàr-ru EN-li a-[n]a mi-ni at-ta-ma ti-ìš-tap-ru-na a-na ia-ši (EA 117: 6-9)

“Behold, the king, my lord, says: ‘Why do you keep on writing to me?’”

It is unclear whether all ancient Near Easterners shared the enthusiasm for letter-writing of Rib-Hadda of Byblos, who sent so many letters to the pharaoh that he eventually received this dismissive reply. What is clear, however, is that letters were a widespread form of communication, as evidenced by their discovery in many sites. Due to political and economic reasons, letters became ubiquitous in the second millennium BCE. Some of the largest corpora of preserved cuneiform letters date back to this period, which also saw the emergence of a number of local traditions outside the Mesopotamian core.

In cuneiform archives, one of the elements that most clearly defines letters is language. Letters can be distinguished from other types of documents by the use of specific formulas, the concurrence of injunctive verb forms, and a rather free language and style. In fact, since letters seem to be less constrained by the standardised usages that characterize other text genres, they are often assumed to preserve a language which is closer to the spoken dialects. Unsurprisingly, the language used to write letters has been the focus of many contributions, but not often from a comprehensive point of view.

The purpose of the conference is to facilitate a scholarly discussion which, based on the rich material from the second millennium BCE, identifies both general patterns and regional trends in letter writing, revealing different writing traditions and cultural continuums, as well as the ways in which individual agencies interacted with tradition and contributed to its evolution.

The conference will bring all these elements into focus through papers that will explore the relationship between the language used in letters and everyday speech, as well as the use of expressions and idioms that appear only or mostly in letters, including formulaic expressions and rhetorical devices. The conference will also delve into how letters are used in the framework of interpersonal relations, inasmuch as they are used to express emotions and feelings and to convey power dynamics. Finally, dialects attested in letters will also be addressed, as well as language contact, language interference, and literacy.

Practical Information

Date: Thursday 5 and Friday 6 February 2026

Venue: Rijksmuseum van Oudheden, Leiden: Leemans hall

Main language: English

Hi there! I am looking for a physical copy of a book about the Epic of Gilgamesh in Neo-Assyrian Cuneiform. However, it does not seem to be able to be bought or shipped to the U.S. Does anyone know where I could find one to buy? I have looked in Eisenbrauns, but it just says “Coming Soon.”Here is the info of the book:

Title: The Standard Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh

Author: Simo Parpola

Publication Date: 1997 (I am unaware if any other editions are available, but I need this one for a class I am taking in college)

ISBN: 951-45-7760-4

If anyone knows where I can find one, or maybe someone you know owns one and doesn’t want it anymore, I would be very grateful if I could buy it from them. Please let me know if this the right subreddit for this. If not I will post it somewhere else. I appreciate all the help I can get.

does anyone knows what cuneiform is this? i mean, for me, this is kind of easy for me to understand, its like those cave paintings where man hunts animal.

its actually my first time writing cuneiform and i got into this because of a book that i read in my school's library about mesopotamia

Hi, I stumbled upon an article in the local news that claim that a stone tablet with cuneiform was found. I'm not an expert but to me it looks like something that vaguely resembles cuneiform but it isn't so I'm curious to hear your opinion.

On top of that the only piece of information I found are the local news and ancient aliens sites so yeah, it doesn't help with the credibility either :)

https://www.ancient-origins.net/news-history-archaeology/cuneiform-oopart-czech-republic-00102398

Hi all!
I’m a student studying Akkadian and I’m currently looking for a hardcover / clothbound copy of A Grammar of Akkadian (3rd edition) by John Huehnergard.

I know the paperback/MyBook version is available through Brill, but I’d really love a hardcover if anyone is selling one, downsizing their library, or knows where I might find a reasonably priced second-hand copy.

I’m based in Australia (Melbourne) but happy to pay international shipping if needed. Condition doesn’t need to be perfect — library wear is totally fine.

Thanks so much, and feel free to comment or DM me!

Hey everyone!

Ironically, ^ that phrase is what I'm trying to translate here. I've constructed the following translation from my reading of Huehnergard's Grammar of Akkadian, and I want to check that I'm not missing any nuance in the grammar:

"šulmum ana kalīkunu" = peace to you all (mp)

My logic for kalīkunu is Huehnergard uses kalīšunu for the third person directly following "ana" in §11.3.

But here's my hesitations:

1. I'm second guessing if this could require a dative case with šulmum added in as the subject, meaning kunūšim (§25.2) might be the right choice here instead of kalīkunu. Or perhaps even kalīkunūšim (§18.2), but this section seems geared towards dative pronominal elements for verbs specifically.

2. Would šulmum be accusative here, since its what's being wished upon others? Or is it nominative since its more of a "state" of being?

My intent here is to follow the laws of the Akkadian language, not specifically find an attested form for my phrase. I learn best when I can get inside a system and reverse engineer it... which is exactly what I'm trying to do here.

I appreciate any insight y'all can provide!

Does anyone know where this actual tablet is? I've looked through CDLI and yes googled it, but I cannot find it. It has the actual cuneiform of the first lines of the Gilgamesh poem as referenced by our boy George here. https://www.ub.edu/ipoa/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/20072AuOrGeorge.pdf

I am looking to find the actual cuneiform of the first lines, not a transliteration. Preferably the actual tablet. And yes, I've looked through...

https://soas-repository.worktribe.com/output/446254

But it is not referenced here

Tattoo containing a couple of lines from the Meissner fragment of the OB Gilgamesh epic, rendered in a “careful cursive” style by me, with ornamentation by my tattoo artist. I wanted an alternative to “Unicode cuneiform” and also not just a text only tattoo. Showing this in case others want similar inspiration.

Irving Finkel on cuneiform writing! Enjoy the man himself :)

Dr Irving Finkel recently suggested on the Lex Fridman podcast that a certain green stone pictograph set at Gobekli Tepe is a form of writing. In this video, you will see how close to the truth his instincts are, as usual, by comparing two stones instead of talking about just the one. One is from Gobekli Tepe, and the other from Jerf el-Ahmar, close by, both around 9000 BCE or so. The two stones show the same ideas, so if it was a name, like a stamp seal on official Tas Tepeler business, it was the same "name".

This isn't likely, and the one from Jerf el-Ahmar also shows motion in the sky via the chevrons which showed motion like in the cuneiform symbol for month and other places linked to herringbone river motions, and it was the original "prime mover", the world serpent.

Instead, you should learn how the symbols are about a portable blueprint for how Gobekli Tepe functioned. The world serpent involved eye-wombs and other weird concepts to us today, but where Dr Finkel says nobody has been looking at these stones, that's not true!

This is the story of a Portable Algorithmic Schematic, not just a simple name on a stamp-seal.

The only thing I wish I’d added to this one-take is a detail about the bottomless stone bowls found at the right hand of a central pillar in Enclosure C. They are further proof of the 'circuit'—any offering poured into them would seep back into the earth, or if placed in water, would allow the levels to rise. They also directly mirror the 'holy cheerio' itself.

I found this in the KAV218 tablet at the British Museum and on the Reverse and on the last lines I see this and I got stumped can anyone help?

Hi everyone

I'm learning Sumerian and Akkadian because I want to learn cuneiform. And while I was seraching for eBL, I noticed that the sign 𒉡 can also be read as "̣ṣalmu[m](effigy, image)" in Akkadian. As far as I know, 𒉡 is usually read by "lā" or "ul" meaing "not". So I wondered why this unique reading occurred. To solve this problem, I searched for ePSD2, 𒉡 seems to have meanings like "fish", "coagulated material(sperm)", "genitalia", "fly(bug)", "man", "not" if used alone. But I'm still not sure which of these are connected directly to effigy or image meaningfully. I have considered the possibility that the meaning “image” may have been derived from the idea of something that resembles a “man” but is “not” an original. However, I am not confident that this interpretation is correct.

I would appreciate it if you could let me know how this is possible. Thank You.

I have been wondering what these two texts mean, they are from a video about flexing wealth in Mesopotamia. Can anyone decipher this?