Joan Goodnick Westenholz

Cuneiform Inscriptions in the Collection of the Bible Lands Museum Jerusalem: the Emar Tablets (Cuneiform Monographs, 13) Joan Goodnick Westenholz

This volume looks at the Late Bronze Age city of Emar. A multi-ethnic population of Hittites, Assyrians, Egyptians and the north-west Semitic-speaking natives inhabited this port of call situated on the middle Euphrates on the frontier of the Hittite province of Syria, facing Babylonia to the south-east and Assyria to the north-east. It flourished during the last days of this hegemonic power system which was broken by the inroads of the Aramaeans, the Israelites, the Sea Peoples, and the rise of the Phoenician city states in the 12th century BC. The tablets published here are in a variety of languages and cover the full range of types of documents found from rituals and cultic inventories to legal documents and payment lists. Each text type is dicussed and parallels to previously published texts are given. Every document is provided with an introduction placing it in its context, a transliteration, translation and philological and textual notes. Furthermore, they are presented in photographs, hand copies and with drawings of all the Hittite and Syrian sealings. These texts provide insights into the political, economic, social and religious life of the critical period of the late 13th and early 12th centuries BC when the face of the Near East underwent global changes.