The Relations between the Laws of Babylonia and the Laws of the Hebrew Peoples / The Schweich Lectures

by C. H. W. Johns

Contract Literature.

Many texts published in the above collections of Temple Accounts are bonds, deeds of sale, even legal decisions, &c., and really come under the head of contracts. But even among the collections of contracts some accounts have been published, and it is scarcely necessary here to quote the same book under both heads.

Curiously enough the first contracts to attract attention were of an early date. Loftus found at Senkereh a number of most interesting case-tablets, the principal document being invariably enclosed in a clay envelope which, as was subsequently discovered, was inscribed with an abstract or practical duplicate of the principal document. Many speculations arose as to their purpose. Some regarded them as a substitute for money, or cheques, banknotes in clay (so Layard in 1853), and other weird guesses. George Smith first recognized their meaning and value for history by publishing their dates, the names which the Babylonians gave to the years, calling them after some prominent event.

Discovered in 1854, they were first published in 1882 by J. N. Strassmaier. Owing to some misapprehension, as given in Layard’s Nineveh and Babylon, p. 496, despite the clear statement on pp. 270-72 of Loftus, Travels and Researches in Chaldea and Susiana, they were called Die altbabylonischen Verträge aus Warka in the Beilage to the Verhandlungen des V. internationalen Orientalistischen Congresses zu Berlin, 1881. They were accompanied by a list of words and names. E. and V. Revillout discussed them most interestingly in Une Famille de commerçants de Warka. They proved to be of the time of Hammurabi and his son Samsu-iluna after these kings had expelled Rîm-Sin from the South of Babylonia. But there were several dated in the reign of Rîm-Sin, and in those of Sin-idinnam and Nûr-adad, kings who had preceded him. Thus they showed how, despite changes of dynasty, the civil life of the subject population went on undisturbed, and customs changed but little. They show how closely the Code pictures the daily life of the people. As most illustrative of the Code, constituting a contemporary commentary on its regulations and consisting chiefly of examples of the same cases as there considered, we may here group in order of publication the collections from the First Dynasty of Babylon.

Inscribed Babylonian Tablets in the possession of Sir Henry Peek, Bart., 1888, contained a few texts of this period, copied, transcribed, and translated by T. G. Pinches. This made considerable advances, but there was not yet enough material to solve many obscurities. These tablets came from Sippara.

It was evident that the only hope of understanding such technical documents lay in the publication of further material, so that by comparison of similar passages some information could be obtained as to alternative readings and phrases.

In 1893 a great advance was made by Meissner with his Beiträge zum altbabylonischen Privatrecht (Leipzig, Hinrichs), which gave a full transliteration and translation of 111 texts, all carefully published in autography. Full notes and invaluable comments made this a standard work. The texts were chiefly from tablets found at Sippara, and stored in the British Museum, and at Berlin where a large quantity had been purchased. Meissner also reproduced some of the Warka texts.

In the fourth volume of Schrader’s Keilinschriftliche Bibliothek, 1896, F. E. Peiser gave a collection of contract texts in transcription and translation, arranged in chronological order. He included thirty-one texts of this period (Berlin, Reuther and Reichard). These were called Texte juristischen und geschäftlichen Inhalts, and marked a further advance in treatment. In this year also began the great series of publications called Cuneiform Texts from Babylonian Tablets, &c., in the British Museum, printed by order of the Trustees. Vols. ii, iv, vi, and viii (1896, 1897, 1898, 1899), contain copies of no fewer than 395 texts mostly of this period, a most valuable addition to our knowledge of the subject. They were from the practised hand of T. G. Pinches, who gave in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1897 and 1899, some transliterations and translations with notes and comments on fifteen of them. They were all Sippara tablets.

In 1902 appeared Une saison de fouilles à Sippar (Le Caire, Institut Français), in which V. Scheil gave an account of his explorations at Abu Habba, the ancient Sippara, in 1892-1893, and many texts in a preliminary form, with transcription, translation, and comments, thus making known a most valuable supplement to the earlier publications of First Dynasty tablets.

In 1906 Th. Friedrich published in the Beiträge zur Assyriologie, vol. v, a number of texts from the tablets found by Scheil at Sippara, and then preserved in the Museum at Constantinople, as Altbabylonische Urkunden aus Sippara (Leipzig, Hinrichs), which completed Scheil’s work in many ways.

In 1906, A. H. Ranke published Babylonian Legal and Business Documents from the time of the First Babylonian Dynasty, as vol. vi, part 1, of the Series A, Cuneiform Texts, of the Publications of the Babylonian Expedition of the University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania). They probably all came from Sippara, though two may be from Babylon, unless the king was then holding Court in Sippara.

In 1908 J. É. Gautier gave us Archives d’une famille de Dilbat au temps de la Première Dynastie de Babylon (Le Caire, Institut Français), with transcriptions and translations of sixty-six tablets from a new site, which the contents of the texts certainly prove to be that of the ancient city of Dilbat. The work was well done, but needed revision by fresh material.

About this time native diggers brought to light fresh material from several new sites. Especially valuable were the texts from Kish, Larsa, Opis, Babylon, and Shittab. These were eagerly acquired by the various Museums, and shortly gave rise to a crop of fresh publications.

In 1909 came Babylonian Legal and Business Documents from the time of the First Dynasty of Babylon, by A. Poebel, being vol. vi, part 2, of Series A, Cuneiform Texts, of the Publications of the Babylonian Expedition of the University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania). Again a fresh site, the ancient Nippur, yielded its contribution. Here most of the tablets exhibit the old Sumerian phraseology.

A. Ungnad published, in 1909, a large number of texts from tablets in the Berlin Museum, acquired at various dates. They appeared as vols. vii, viii, ix of the Vorderasiatische Denkmäler (Leipzig, Hinrichs). Most of them undoubtedly came from Sippara; one from Der-ez-Zor, near the Chabour, and those in vol. vii from Dilbat, apparently the modern Delam. Thus we can again compare contemporary documents from a fresh site, which proves to have been influenced by other peoples, the Mitanni, Elamites, &c. In Urkunden aus Dilbat, vol. vi, part 5, of the Beiträge zur Assyriologie (Leipzig, Hinrichs, 1909), A. Ungnad transcribes, translates, and comments upon the large collection of letters and contracts which had been published from Dilbat. His works brought a large amount of most valuable information for the period.

In 1910 Thureau-Dangin issued Lettres et contrats de l’époque de la Première dynastie babylonienne (Paris, Geuthner), a most valuable work for its indexes, as well as the interesting texts. A long and extremely fine text was also given by him as Un jugement sous Ammiditana, in Revue d’Assyriologie, 1910, pp. 121-7. Here were texts from Sippara, Babylon, Dilbat, Kish, and possibly Shittab, as well as some more from Der-ez-Zor. In the Revue d’Assyriologie, 1911, pp. 68-79, Thureau-Dangin published Sept contrats of the reigns of the kings of Kish, who were contemporary with the foundation of the First Dynasty and themselves Amorites. St. Langdon published several more of these Tablets from Kish in the Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archaeology, 1911, pp. 185-96, and in the same journal for 1912, pp. 109-13, gave eleven Contracts from Larsa.

C. E. Keiser published Tags and Labels from Nippur in The Museum Journal of Philadelphia, vol. iii, no. 2, pp. 29-31. These closely related documents form a borderland between contracts and accounts.

These contracts are so much more important for the elucidation of the Code than any later documents that we may now notice the chief discussions of them.

Not much of this class of documents has yet come to light for the Third or Kassite Dynasty of Babylon. A. T. Clay gave us vols. xiv, xv of the Publications of the Babylonian Expedition of the University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania, 1906), entitled Documents from the Temple Archives of Nippur, dated in the Reigns of Cassite Rulers. They showed how the old customs were preserved and modified with fresh immigrations. These were followed in 1912 by Documents from the Temple Archives of Nippur, dated in the Reigns of Cassite Rulers, the Museum Publications of the Babylonian Section, vol. ii, no. 2 (Philadelphia Museum), completing the collections. Some of the same sort from Nippur, in the E. A. Hoffmann collection in the Metropolitan Museum in New York, were noted in Radau’s Early Babylonian History, pp. 328-9 (New York, 1900).

F. E. Peiser, in 1905, had published Urkunden aus der Zeit der dritten babylonischen Dynastie in Urschrift, Umschrift und Übersetzung, dazu Rechtsausführungen von J. Kohler (Berlin, Wolf Peiser). These appear to have belonged to a family of Babylonians, some of whom adopted Cassite names. More of the same group found their way to the Berlin Museums, and more are in private hands and in the Louvre.

C. J. Ball contributed to the Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archaeology for 1907, pp. 273-4, A Kassite Text.

D. D. Luckenbill in the American Journal of Semitic Languages and Literatures, 1907, pp. 280-322, gave a most valuable Study of the Temple Documents from the Cassite Period.

The scarcity of legal documents from this period may be estimated from the fact that in Texte juristischen und geschäftlichen Inhalts (see p. [81], above) only the so-called boundary-stones could be quoted.

It is in the Third Dynasty of Babylon that the Boundary-Stone or Kudurru inscriptions first appear. These have been much discussed, especially from the side of the curious symbols which occur upon them, often regarded as signs of the Zodiac, or emblems of the gods.

In the Beiträge zur Assyriologie, vol. ii, pp. 111-204, a number of such texts were published and partly discussed by C. Belser, as Babylonische Kudurru-Inschriften. Peiser incorporated some in the fourth volume of Schrader’s Keilinschriftliche Bibliothek. W. J. Hinke gave in 1907, as vol. iv of Series D of the Publications of the Babylonian Expedition of the University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania), A New Boundary-Stone of Nebuchadrezzar I from Nippur, in which he also gave a full bibliography of the subject, collected names, words, &c., from all the texts of the sort hitherto published, and discussed the symbols. In Babylonian Boundary-stones and Memorial Tablets in the British Museum, with an Atlas of Plates (London, British Museum, 1912), L. W. King gave the whole of the British Museum material. In 1911 Hinke contributed to the Semitic Study Series (Leiden, E. J. Brill), a useful collection in Selected Babylonian Kudurru Inscriptions. Many such inscriptions are published by V. Scheil with transcriptions and translations in Mémoires de la Délégation en Perse (Paris, E. Leroux), vols. ii, pp. 86-94, 97-116; vi, pp. 30-47; vii, 137-53; x, 87-96. F. Steinmetzer contributed Eine Schenkungsurkunde des Königs Melishichu to the Beiträge zur Assyriologie, vol. viii, pp. 1-38.

Hinke gives an excellent bibliography of the Babylonian kudurru inscriptions, their publications, transliterations, translations, and discussions. Some are of the nature of Freibriefe, and Meissner so treated one in the Zeitschrift für Assyriologie, 1889, pp. 259-67, cf. pp. 403-4. He also wrote Assyrische Freibriefe in the Beiträge zur Assyriologie II. (1894), pp. 565-72, 581-8, giving text, transliteration, translation, and discussion of three examples from the reign of Ashurbanipal and one of Adad-nirari. In my Assyrian Deeds and Documents (Cambridge, Deighton, Bell & Co., 1902), nos. 646, 647, 648, and 651, I republished these texts and added nos. 649, 650, two texts of Ashur-etil-ilâni, son and successor of Ashurbanipal, nos. 652, 653, 654, 655, 656 (= 808 in vol. ii) of Adad-nirari, nos. 657, 658 (dated in B. C. 730), 659 (names Tiglath-Pileser), 660 (now joined to other fragments as 809, an important grant by Sargon II in connexion with the site of Dur-Sargon), 661, 662(?), 663, and possibly also nos. 669, 671, 672, 673, 674 (see now no. 1101), 692 (now part of 807), 714 (now part of 809), and in vol. ii, nos. 734, 735, 736, 737, 738(?), 739, 740(?), 741(?), on to 752, all possible fragments of similar proclamations, Freibriefe, charters, or the schedules to them. I have collected the references here, as the texts seem to have met with insufficient attention. Winckler had published parts of some of them in his Altorientalische Forschungen (Leipzig, E. Pfeiffer, 1898), vol. ii, pp. 4-8, and assigned the Ashur-etil-ilâni texts to Esarhaddon’s reign, and in the note on p. 192 to Sin-shar-ishkun. F. E. Peiser made some acute suggestions as to the readings of the text and their meanings.

On no. 809 Meissner wrote a full discussion in the Mitteilungen der Vorderasiatischen Gesellschaft, 1903, pp. 85-96.

In 1883 H. V. Hilprecht published Freibrief Nebukadnezar’s I. (Leipzig, Hinrichs), with great advances on the previous treatment, and published others in Old Babylonian Inscriptions, vol. i, part 1 (1893), nos. 80, 83, part 2 (1896), nos. 149, 150. In 1891 K. L. Tallqvist wrote on Babylonische Schenkungsbriefe (Helsingfors). In the Beiträge zur Assyriologie, 1894, pp. 258-73, Fr. Delitzsch published and admirably treated Der Berliner Merodachbaladan-Stein.

Ed. Cuq in La Propriété foncière en Chaldée gave a new view of the meaning of these documents and the significance of their first appearing in the Kassite period. It will be seen from the titles given in the above works that no complete unanimity prevails as to their nature and purpose.

We may now turn back to the class of texts usually called contracts.

The Assyrian empire has not yielded much of this class of document, before the time of Sargon II, B.C. 785-722. A number of texts have been reported in the Mitteilungen der Deutschen Orient-Gesellschaft zu Berlin as found at Asshur by the German excavators there, which date from times both early and late. The publication of these texts will doubtless soon be achieved and add greatly to our knowledge. The treatment in Assyria seems to be largely reminiscent of that of Babylonia under the First Dynasty, but there are wide divergences doubtless due to the foreign elements in the Assyrian population. We are not yet possessed of sufficient material to assign the changes to their true causes, but we know enough to be sure that they were not on the whole due to contemporary developments in Babylonia.

In Assyrian Deeds and Documents relating to the transfer of Property, in three volumes, by C. H. W. Johns, published in 1898-1901 (Deighton, Bell & Co., Cambridge, 3 vols.), practically all the material of this class in the British Museum then catalogued was edited. These tablets apparently all came from Nineveh. There are now many more similar tablets in the British Museum listed in the Supplement to the Catalogue. Recently in Assyrische Rechtsurkunden von J. Kohler und A. Ungnad (Leipzig, Ed. Pfeiffer, 1913), a series of transliterations and translations have been commenced which will form a key to the whole, including many other texts since published.

It was on these texts that J. Oppert formed his views given in Das Assyrische Landrecht, and in Le droit de retrait lignager à Ninive, see p. [72].

V. Scheil published in his Notes d’épigraphie in the Recueil de Travaux, xx, note xl (1898), pp. 202-5, four tablets which possibly did not come from Nineveh. I republished the texts as nos. 779-82 in my Deeds and Documents above. The first is discussed by Meissner as Eine assyrische Schenkungsurkunde in the Mitteilungen der Vorderasiatischen Gesellschaft, 1903, pp. 103-5, where he points out that my no. 619 is another like text. Here Adi-mati-ilu and other property were given to a son who was to take a double portion and divide the rest with his brothers.

F. E. Peiser in the Orientalistische Litteraturzeitung, 1905, cols. 130-4, gave Ein neuer assyrischer Kontrakt, V. Scheil in the same journal for 1904, col. 70, and in the Recueil de Travaux, xxiv, note lxii, p. 24, pointed out others, while in Vorderasiatische Schriftdenkmäler, vol. i, nos. 84-111, A. Ungnad published several more from Kannu’ and Kerkûk. S. Schiffer discussed many of these as Keilschriftliche Spuren der in der zweiten Hälfte des 8. Jahrhunderts von den Assyrern nach Mesopotamien deportierten Samarier, a Beiheft to Orientalistische Litteraturzeitung (Berlin, W. Peiser, 1907), with which may be compared an article in the Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archaeology, 1908, pp. 107-15, 137-41, on The Lost Ten Tribes of Israel, by C. H. W. Johns. In an article Aus dem Louvre, F. E. Peiser published in the Orientalistische Litteraturzeitung, 1903, cols. 192-200, a new collation of no. 1,141 in my Deeds and Documents, which had been formerly treated by Place, Oppert, and Strassmaier; and an edition of another text of this class. The new Supplement to the Catalogue of the Tablets in the Kouyunjik Collection in the British Museum, by L. W. King (London, British Museum, 1914), shows that many more such texts await publication, and there are others in the Museums in England and America.

This class of document was early known for the times of the Neo-babylonian Empire, and thousands of the so-called contracts have been published down to the century before the Christian era.

J. Oppert began the task of publishing and deciphering contracts, for which his legal training as well as his philological learning especially fitted him. His work may be gathered from the bibliography in the second volume of the Beiträge zur Assyriologie, pp. 523-56. His great effort was Documents juridiques de l’Assyrie et de la Chaldée (Paris, Maisonneuve, 1877), but he continued to deal with contracts up to his death. Here as elsewhere comparison of fresh material continually brought new light.

A number of such tablets were copied by T. G. Pinches(?) for the fifth volume of Inscriptions of Western Asia (London, British Museum, 1909, plates lxvii, lxviii), on which Oppert built his determination of Babylonian measures. J. N. Strassmaier, in 1855, published Die babylonischen Inschriften im Museum zu Liverpool nebst anderen aus der Zeit von Nebukadnezar bis Darius (Leiden, J. Brill).

The tablets in the British Museum from Sippara, Babylon, Borsippa, &c., dated in the reigns of Nebuchadrezzar, Nabopolassar, Evil-Merodach, Neriglissar, Nabonidus, Cyrus, Cambyses, and Darius, were also edited by J. N. Strassmaier as Babylonische Texte, Inschriften von den Thontafeln des British Museums copiert und autographiert, in twelve volumes (Leipzig, 1887-1897). On the mass of material thus rendered available to scholars were based a very large number of memoirs and monographs which may be arranged here. K. L. Tallqvist, in 1890, published Die Sprache der Contracte Nabû-nâ’id’s (Helsingfors, J. C. Frenckell), in which he collected all the words and phrases occurring in these texts, with useful indexes. R. Zehnpfund gave Babylonische Weberrechnungen in the Beiträge zur Assyriologie, i, pp. 492ff. (1890): L. Demuth, Fünfzig Rechts-und Verwaltungsurkunden aus der Zeit des Königs Kyros, in the same journal, vol. iii, pp. 393-444 (1898); E. Ziemer, Fünfzig Rechts-und Verwaltungsurkunden aus der Zeit des Königs Kambyses, same volume, pp. 445-92; V. Marx, Die Stellung der Frauen in Babylonien gemäss den Kontrakten aus der Zeit von Nebukadnezar bis Darius, same journal, vol. iv, pp. 1-77, 1902; and E. Kotalla, Fünfzig babylonische Rechts-und Verwaltungsurkunden aus der Zeit des Königs Artaxerxes I, same volume, pp. 551-74. Fr. Delitzsch contributed Notizen zu den neubabylonischen Kontrakttafeln, same journal, vol. iii, pp. 385-92 (1898), and J. Kohler, Ein Beitrag zum neubabylonischen Recht, vol. iv, pp. 423-30. F. E. Peiser, in 1889, published Keilinschriftliche Actenstücke aus babylonischen Städten (Berlin, W. Peiser), and, in 1890, Babylonische Verträge des Berliner Museums (Berlin, W. Peiser). This marked great advances on Oppert’s work, owing to Strassmaier’s new material and the Berlin collections. He next contributed a selection of transliterations and translations to the fourth volume of Schrader’s Keilinschriftliche Bibliothek (1896), p. 81, above. Then from 1890-1898 appeared Aus dem babylonischen Rechtsleben (Leipzig, Pfeiffer), in conjunction with J. Kohler, containing many new texts. A. B. Moldenke, in 1893, published for the Metropolitan Museum at New York a volume of Cuneiform Texts, all of this period. In 1890 appeared Recherches sur quelques contrats babyloniens, by A. Boissier (Paris, E. Leroux).

In the Zeitschrift für Assyriologie (Weimar, E. Felber, 1894) Y. le Gac published Quelques inscriptions assyro-babyloniennes du Musée Lycklama à Cannes, pp. 385-90, and in Babyloniaca (Paris, P. Geuthner, 1910), Textes babyloniens de la Collection Lycklama à Cannes, pp. 33-72. In 1902 T. G. Pinches contributed to the Verhandlungen des XIII. Orientalistischen Congresses some Notes on a Small Collection of Tablets from the Birs Nimroud belonging to Lord Amherst of Hackney.

In vols. III-VI of the Vorderasiatische Schriftdenkmäler (1907-1908), A. Ungnad published many texts of this period, and gave later some valuable Untersuchungen on the same, Aus der altbabylonischen Kontrakt-literatur, to the Orientalistische Litteraturzeitung, 1912, cols. 106-8.

A new source for this material was the finds at Nippur, printed in The Publications of the Babylonian Expedition of the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Series A. Cuneiform Texts, vol. viii, part 1 contained Legal and Commercial Transactions from the Neo-babylonian Empire to Darius II, by A. T. Clay, 1908; vols. ix and x, by the same author, contained Business Documents of Murashû Sons of Nippur in the reign of Artaxerxes I (1898), and Business Documents in the reign of Darius II (1904). A new series has since been commenced.

The Museum Publications of the Babylonian Section of the University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia Museum), vol. ii, no. 1, gives Business Documents of Murashû Sons of Nippur, by A. T. Clay (1912), and vol. ii, no. 2, Documents from the Temple Archives at Nippur, by the same author (1912).

Selected Business Documents of the Neo-Babylonian Period in the Semitic Study Series, by A. Ungnad (Leiden, Brill, 1908), forms a useful introduction to the subject.

In 1911 appeared Hundert ausgewählte Rechtsurkunden aus der Spätzeit des babylonischen Schrifltums von Xerxes bis Mithridates, 485-93 v. Chr., by A. Ungnad and J. Kohler (Leipzig, Pfeiffer), and I. L. Holt contributed to the American Journal of Semitic Languages and Literatures a study of some Tablets from the R. C. Thompson Collection in Haskell Oriental Museum, The University of Chicago.

Of considerable interest as in some senses a link between Babylonia and Palestine are the Cappadocian Tablets. The first notice of them was given by T. G. Pinches in the Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archaeology, Nov. 1, 1881, pp. 11-18. Some tablets in the British Museum were acquired from a dealer who said they had been found in Cappadocia. The script was then quite unfamiliar, and they were supposed at first to be written in a language neither Sumerian nor Semitic. Golenischeff published in 1891 the text of twenty-four tablets of the same class which he had acquired at Kaisareyeh. He made out that many words were Assyrian and read many names. Fr. Delitzsch made a most valuable study of them in the Abhandlungen der philos.-hist. Classe der K. Sächs. Gesellschaft d. Wissenschaften, 1893, no. 11. In 1894 P. Jensen in the Zeitschrift für Assyriologie, vol. ix, pp. 62-81, made many corrections and additions. F. E. Peiser then discussed them in his introduction to the fourth volume of Schrader’s Keilinschriftliche Bibliothek, and gave the transcription and translation of the texts of nine, pp. 50-56. A considerable number more were discovered at Boghaz Köi, Kara Eyuk, and elsewhere, and published by V. Scheil in the Mémoires de la Mission en Cappadoce, and commented upon by A. Boissier in the Proceedings of the Society for Biblical Archaeology, 1900, pp. 106 ff. Four Cappadocian tablets were published by Thureau-Dangin among his Lettres et Contrats, see p. [82], above.

In Babyloniaca, 1908, pp. 1-45, A. H. Sayce translated the Golenischeff texts, and others published by Chantre, or found by Ramsay, &c.

T. G. Pinches with A. H. Sayce published and discussed The Cappadocian Tablet from Yuzghat in the Liverpool Institute of Archaeology, 1906.

In 1908 T. G. Pinches published twenty more in the Annals of Archaeology of the Liverpool University, vol. i, pp. 49-80. In the Florilegium de Vogüé, pp. 591-k, Thureau-Dangin discussed Un acte de répudiation sur une tablette cappadocienne, 1909, and in the Revue d’Assyriologie, 1911, pp. 142-51, gave more texts fixing La date des tablettes cappadociennes as contemporary with the Dynasty of Ur in Babylonia, thus proving cuneiform to have been widely used in that region to write a Semitic language long before the time of Hammurabi. In Babyloniaca, 1911, pp. 65-80, A. H. Sayce gave some Cappadocian Cuneiform Tablets from Kara Eyuk, affiliating them with early Assyrian rulers. In the same journal, 1911, pp. 216-28, A. Boissier gave more texts under the title Nouveaux documents de Boghaz Köi. In the same journal, 1912, pp. 182-93, A. H. Sayce wrote upon The Cappadocian Cuneiform Tablets of the University of Pennsylvania.

All these works have contributed comments of more or less value, and the whole point to a close connexion with Babylonia and Assyria, and the extended use of cuneiform in Cappadocia from very early times, whence it was doubtless taken over by the later Hittites.