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.