Edward A. Dickson Cuneiform Tablet collection, Ur III period-Neo-Babylonian period (circa 2100-562 BCE)

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Summary

Creators:
Dickson, Edward A. (Edward Augustus)
Abstract:
The majority of the eight tablets are administrative in nature, citing loans, receipts, and inventories. Most of the administrative texts date to the Ur III period (Third Dynasty of Ur). One tablet contains a royal inscription from the Early Old Babylonian period (ca. 2000-1800 BCE) on a clay cone. This collection was donated to UCLA by Edward A. Dickson.
Extent:
1 oversize box
Language:
Materials are in Cuneiform.
Preferred citation:

[Identification of item], Edward A. Dickson Cuneiform Tablet collection (Collection 1813). UCLA Library Special Collections, Charles E. Young Research Library, University of California, Los Angeles.

Background

Scope and content:

The majority of texts in this collection are administrative in nature, citing loans, receipts, and inventories. All but one of the administrative texts date to the Ur III period (Third Dynasty of Ur), known for its abundance of economic documents. During the Ur III period (ca. 2100-2004 BCE), the state reached a level of centralization that was unprecedented. To accommodate the large population of workers and products under this state run economy, written records of business transactions and inventories were constantly issued.

The collection also contains a royal inscription from the Early Old Babylonian period (ca. 2000-1800 BCE) on a clay cone. Clay cones were often used to commemorate the building of monumental architecture. An inscription praising the king and his deities would be written around the cone on its vertical axis. Then the cone would be inserted into the wall of the structure obscuring the inscription from human eyes.

The cone is from the reign of Lipit-Ishtar (ca.1934-1924 BCE). His seat of power was in the city of Isin. Lipit-Ishtar is best known for his set of laws, issued even before Hammurabi's famous law code. When Lipit-Ishtar published his law code, he also built the Enisisa (literally, "house of justice") and he had its construction recorded on over a hundred clay cones, of which this is just one.

Biographical / historical:

Edward Augustus Dickson donated his collection of tablets to the University of California-Los Angeles. Dickson was one of the founding fathers of the Los Angeles campus for the California university system. He was appointed to Board of Regents in 1912 and served until his death in 1956, at the age of 76.

Processing information:

Transliterations by Justin Cale Johnson. Processed by Sara Brumfield in the Center for Primary Research and Training (CFPRT), with assistance from Kelley Wolfe Bachli, 2008.

Collections are processed to a variety of levels depending on the work necessary to make them usable, their perceived user interest and research value, availability of staff and resources, and competing priorities. Library Special Collections provides a standard level of preservation and access for all collections and, when time and resources permit, conducts more intensive processing. These materials have been arranged and described according to national and local standards and best practices.

We are committed to providing ethical, inclusive, and anti-racist description of the materials we steward, and to remediating existing description of our materials that contains language that may be offensive or cause harm. We invite you to submit feedback about how our collections are described, and how they could be described more accurately, by filling out the form located on our website: Report Potentially Offensive Description in Library Special Collections.

Arrangement:

Tablets are described at the item level.

Physical location:
Stored off-site. All requests to access special collections material must be made in advance using the request button located on this page.
Rules or conventions:
Describing Archives: A Content Standard

Access and use

Restrictions:

Open for research. All requests to access special collections materials must be made in advance using the request button located on this page.

Terms of access:

Property rights to the objects belong to UCLA Library Special Collections. All other rights, including copyright, are retained by the creators and their heirs. It is the responsibility of the researcher to determine who holds the copyright and pursue the copyright owner or his or her heir for permission to publish where The UC Regents do not hold the copyright.

Preferred citation:

[Identification of item], Edward A. Dickson Cuneiform Tablet collection (Collection 1813). UCLA Library Special Collections, Charles E. Young Research Library, University of California, Los Angeles.

Location of this collection:
A1713 Charles E. Young Research Library
Box 951575
Los Angeles, CA 90095-1575, US
Contact:
(310) 825-4988
AskLSC@library.ucla.edu
Website