Jack Murad Sasson, distinguished scholar of the ancient Near East, has enjoyed a long career studying the cultures, languages, and literatures of that consequential region. His many books and articles span a seemingly endless array of topics and materials. Foremost are his in-depth analyses of the Syrian city of Mari and its remarkable heritage. Of comparable importance are his definitive studies of the Hebrew Bible, in particular his commentaries on the books of Judges, Ruth, and Jonah. In addition, the encyclopedic four-volume set he initiated and edited, Civilizations of the Ancient Near East, stands out as an exceptional contribution to peers, students, and the general public. To honor him and his scholarly achievements, thirty-five of his longtime colleagues and friends have collaborated to produce this volume of essays on such diverse cultures as Sumer, Babylonia, Assyria, the Amorites, Egypt, Ebla, the Hurrians, the Hittites, Ugarit, the Arameans, Canaan, and Israel. The studies in this volume display the richness of these cultures-their literary legacies, languages, political and social histories, material remains, religions and rituals, and history of ideas-as well as their reception in modern times. The volume is both a contribution to the evolving study of the ancient Near East and also a fitting tribute to Jack Sasson, whose friendship and scholarship we have long cherished and esteemed.

This book examines a collection of twenty-two literary letters and related compositions - the Sumerian Epistolary Miscellany (SEpM) - studied as part of the Old Babylonian Sumerian scribal curriculum, in an attempt to better understand the education system at this time. The author includes discussion of the nature of the letters as scribal inventions, the pedagogical function of literary letters and compilation tablets, as well as the creation, implementation and consistency of the advanced Sumerian scribal curriculum. The volume also contains critical editions of SEpM as well as ancillary Sumerian letters studied in the Nippur schools, the majority of which were previously unpublished.

In 1914, William M. Nesbit published his dissertation at Columbia University on 30 archival texts from the Third Dynasty of Ur. Now, more than a century later, the remaining tablets in his collection have been recovered and, thanks to the generosity of the Nesbit family, were made available for publication by David I. Owen. The majority of texts published here is from Puzris-Dagan (Drehem) with some from Nippur and Umma. They originate from the earliest clandestine finds at those sites. The 98 texts, including a re-edition of the previously published tablets, are provided with a catalogue, hand-copies, selected photographs, along with transliterations, translations and comments, thus providing an important addition to the extensive corpus of Ur III texts from this important period in Mesopotamian history.