This is so good

yessss!!!! Congratulations!!

the Artemis mission is what I believe in and want to see more of in the world. smart, kind experts working together for knowledge and discovery.

I was particularly happy to see how her work tackled archival analysis: there aren't enough large scale studies out there and there's a lot of work to be done for cuneiform studies in this way.

Give it a read! Share it around!

"Wax Boards and Parchment in Third Millennium Mesopotamia", Revue d’Assyriologie 117 (2023) 29-48 [co-author: Piotr Steinkeller] La reproduction ou représentation de cet article, notamment par photocopie, n'est autorisée que dans les limites des conditions générales d'utilisation du site ou, le cas échéant, des conditions générales de la licence souscrite par votre

But we know that cuneiform scribes engaged with writing beyond clay and rock face, they also had wax tablets and leather in use since the 3rd millennium:

www.academia.edu/115342606/_W...

We think that they were used as tags for scrolls, that a string was pulled through the docket and attached to rolled up leather, possibly parchment.

As far as I know, no evidence of the scrolls exist outside of visual art examples, such as here:

I was struck by some of the material brought into the study, I hadn't known much about cuneiform dockets, these triangular objects with sometimes cuneiform, sometimes Aramaic inscribed upon them:

Interested in the role of bilingualism in empires, imperial administration, novel methods of archival analysis, or the study of multimodal scribal practices?

Check out Dr. Uotila's newly minted dissertation here: researchportal.helsinki.fi/en/publicati...

Celine Debourse, Repekka Uotila, and Andrew Danielson

Today, this year's penultimate meeting of HAANES at Harvard:
@repekka.bsky.social giving her talk, "Keeping an Archive in 7th c. Assyria during the Alphabetic Turn".

Race, Rhetoric, and Infidelity in Calpurnius Flaccus’s Natus Aethiops Abstract: In Calpurnius Flaccus’s Declamation 2, a Roman wife is accused of infidelity on the grounds that she has given birth to an “Aethiopian” (Aethiops). The present article seeks to contextualize this relatively understudied declamation within the recent efflorescence of scholarship on ancient race, highlighting its connections to conventional discourses of race in Latin literature. In what follows, I identify a system of racial categorization as a component of Rome’s imperializing vision of the world and demonstrate how discourses of race regulate domestic concerns at Rome, such as marriage, extramarital desire, and reproduction. The article also seeks to show how anxieties of racial contact, exemplified by blackness as index of symbolic exteriority, collide with anxieties regarding the presence of enslaved people within the Roman household. Keywords: Aethiops, blackness, Calpurnius Flaccus, declamation, race

the world is on fire and I'm feeling some kind of way about it. nonetheless, I just received proofs of an article on race and blackness in Latin literature which I had to fight tooth and nail to get into print

Close! They're typically called firing holes:

As far as I know this is the most recent discussion on the phenomenon:

mtc-journal.org/index.php/mt...

Articolo:L'intelligenza artificiale per studiare le tavolette di Assurbanipal Nel VII secolo avanti Cristo, il colto sovrano assiro Assurbanipal creò una biblioteca reale composta da decine di migliaia di tavolette d’argilla scritte in accadico cuneiforme e contenenti sopratt...

Some bright folks had previously worked on this question via the LIBER project:

www.unive.it/pag/14024/?t...

Short answer: we don't know!

It was earlier suggested to do with the baking process, but this is no longer thought to be the case. @lswisnom.bsky.social has suggested they may relate to pauses in performance, syntax, or visualization. Her article is shared below.

It likely served as study for scribes: the text is concerned about due process, providing warning signs and outcomes of misaligned strategies between a state and its citizens. It informed scribes of the rights and privileges that states targeted for reform and gave suggestions on how to respond.

Scholars previously described this text as a political pamphlet on the grounds that it argues for rebellion against the state.

Rebellion became warranted when (1) a ruler no longer shows regard for his own dominion, and (2) a ruler employs measures to strip people of their rights and liberties.

Images of the tablets found in situ from OIP 114 (Cole 1996).

Map of Nippur from OIP 114 (Cole 1996).

Map of Babylonia c. 750 BCE.

This was a literary work, one of the earliest examples of the “Mirror for Princes” genre, whose best‑known modern representative is Machiavelli’s The Prince.

Interestingly, a copy was found in the Governor's Mansion at Nippur during a tense period between Babylon and Assyria in the 8th century BCE.

[If the king] does not regard his patrons –
his days will diminish.

[If the king] does not regard the scholar –
his land will rebel against him.

[If the king] pays mind to the fool –
the land will defect."

It goes on to address often‑infringed legal rights and economic privileges of citizens.

The opening lines are:

"[If] the king does not regard the law –
his people will become entangled; his land will fall into disrepair.

[If the king] does not regard the law of his land –
Ea, the king of destinies will alter his fates; he will continuously bring misfortune.

Daily Telegraph 1, obverse.

Daily Telegraph 2, reverse.

The first cuneiform text found after George Smith's decipherment of the Epic of Gilgamesh's Flood Tablet in 1872 was a literary text called šarru ana dīni lā iqūl, or 'The King Does Not Regard the Law'.

'The King Does Not Regard the Law' concerns rulers who act out in a state's self-interest:

Come on in, the water's fine!

Ancient Sayings #7: On possessions YouTube video by Parchment and Clay

Today's ancient Sumerian proverb is on the psychology of wealth. #AncientSayings

Elite Persistence in Old Babylonian Nippur & Ur (2026-1700 BCE). A dissertation presented by Andrew Alberto Nicolas Deloucas to the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the subject of Assyriology. Harvard University. Cambridge, Massachusetts. April 2026.

Deloucas Dissertation Database.

Dissertation submitted!

Exporting to PDF...

Logo of the Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale's 71st conference, to be held in Baghdad on 29 March - 2 April 2026. It shows a detail of an Assyrian statue of a lamassu or winged bull in the background: the right half of its human face with curly beard and pointed bulls' ears. In cuneiform on the left are the symbols ki-en-gi ki-uri5, the signs for "Sumer and Akkad", the ancient name for the lands between the Tigris and Euphrates river.

It should have been the first day of a wonderful conference in Baghdad today - the first time ever that the International Association of Assyriology assembled in Iraq for its annual meeting.

This conference was to be the culmination of 4 years of hard work by Iraqi and international colleagues. 1/4

We have a manuscript, we have a database

3 days remain

It has been speculated, though not confirmed, that today's ancient (in world historical terms) proverb was the inspiration for this ancient (in my 11-year-old's opinion) temple hymn. There are certainly resonances in theme and tone.

https://youtu.be/VUb450Alpps?si=2lD9EVly_1Yf0NaC

Photo of a cuneiform tablet shown from the front, back, and various side angles. At the bottom is a watermark for the Yale Babylonian Collection, and to the left of that watermark is a 1cm scale. Based on the scale, the tablet is about 4-5cm wide and 3-4cm tall. In the bottom left corner of the image is a tiny winged creature thumbnail, and along the left side are the letters and numbers "GCBC 766 (YPM BC 034383)"

Today, I've been reading a very old medical commentary from ancient Uruk, written in the Akkadian language.

It's a tiny cuneiform tablet that explains words and phrases excerpted from another text - a diagnostic manual, known in antiquity as Sa-gig.

Ancient Sayings #3: On resistance YouTube video by Parchment and Clay

Number three in my series of ancient proverbs, in which we meet the Sumerian resistance. #Ancient Sayings #Resistance

The ancient reason there are 60 minutes in an hour A mysterious 5,000-year-old decision led directly to how we still count time today.

Where does the 60 minute hour, or 60 second minute come from? Turns out some aspects go way back... this was a fun conversation with Jocelyn Timperley from the BBC: www.bbc.com/future/artic...

Glad to see @iastranger.bsky.social quoted as well!