The Nesbit Tablets

A century ago, William M. Nesbit wrote his Columbia dissertation on thirty administrative tablets from the Third Dynasty of Ur. The rest of his collection then dropped from view. Now recovered and released for study by the Nesbit family, those remaining tablets are published here by David I. Owen, alongside a fresh edition of the original thirty. Most of the ninety-eight texts come from Puzris-Dagan, modern Drehem, with others from Nippur and Umma, all drawn from the earliest clandestine digging at those sites.

Each text is given a catalogue entry, a hand-copy, transliteration, translation and commentary, with photographs of selected tablets. It is a working edition rather than a narrative history, and a valuable one: Assyriologists, students of Sumerian and anyone tracing the paperwork of Ur III Mesopotamia will find new material here.