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.
Babylonian and Assyrian Letters.
A very large number of letters have been preserved to us from all periods of Babylonian and Assyrian history. Many of them are addressed to private correspondents, and concern matters of everyday life. They are often most obscure, as they assume so much knowledge on the part of the recipient which is withheld from us. Where we can grasp their reference they furnish considerable light upon social conditions.
A large number, however, are royal letters or dispatches from the king and his officers to subordinates, or vice versa. These more often concern public affairs.
As yet few letters have come down to us which we can date before the First Dynasty of Babylon, but some will be found in the Inventaire des tablettes de Tello (see p. [80]), and among the various publications of Temple accounts and contracts, as early as the times of Sargon of Akkad.
In the Beiträge zur Assyriologie, vol. ii, pp. 557-64, 572-9, Meissner published Altbabylonische Briefe (1893), with discussions.
In the times of Hammurabi, or the First Dynasty of Babylon, our sources for epistolary correspondence become very ample. L. W. King in his magnificent work, The Letters and Inscriptions of Hammurabi, King of Babylon, about B. C. 2200; to which is added a series of letters of other Kings of the First Dynasty of Babylon (vol. i, Introduction and Babylonian Texts; vol. ii, Babylonian Texts, continued; vol. iii, English Translation, Commentary, Vocabularies, Introduction, etc., London, Luzac & Co., 1898), gave a complete edition of these letters. The materials for history and social life were epoch-making. In the Beiträge zur Assyriologie G. Nagel translated a number of these texts, Briefe Hammurabi’s an Sin-iddinam, vol. iv, pp. 434-83, to which Fr. Delitzsch added Zusatzbemerkungen, pp. 483-500. He, with J. A. Knudtzon, wrote on the same subject, vol. iv, pp. 88-100. M. W. Montgomery took Briefe aus der Zeit des babylonischen Königs Hammurabi as subject for her doctor’s dissertation (Leipzig, Pries, 1901). A. Klostermann published Ein diplomatischer Briefwechsel aus dem 2. Jahrtausend v. Chr. (Leipzig, Deichert, 1903). C. V. Gelderen contributed Ausgewählte babylonisch-assyrische Briefe to the Beiträge zur Assyriologie, iv, 1902, pp. 501-45. Another great collection was published by Thureau-Dangin in Lettres et contrats de l’époque de la première dynastie babylonienne (Paris, P. Geuthner, 1910). The author transliterated, translated, and commented upon three of these texts as Lettres de l’époque de la première dynastie babylonienne in The Hilprecht Anniversary Volume, pp. 156-63.
Les Lettres de Hammurapi à Sin-idinnam, transcription, traduction et commentaire, précédées d’une étude sur deux caractères du style assyro-babylonien, by F. C. Jean (Paris, J. Gabalda, 1913), gives an idea of the subject.
P. S. Landersdorfer, in 1908, had edited Altbabylonische Privatbriefe, transkribiert, übersetzt und kommentiert, nebst einer Einleitung und 4 Registern (Paderborn, Schöningh), and G. A. Barton gave an article On an old Babylonian Letter addressed to Lushtamar in the Journal of the American Oriental Society, pp. 220-22.