Luwian and the closely related Hittite are the oldest known languages of the Indo-European group. Luwian is written in two scripts: Cuneiform and its own Hieroglyphic, which survives mostly on stone monuments collected from Turkey and Syria. The texts fall into two main groups, those of the Hittite Empire (c. 1400–1200 B.C.), and those of the Iron Age (c. 1000–700 B.C.),with a transitional period (c. 1200–1000 B.C.). One of the editor’s principal research efforts has been the establishment of reliable texts presented in facsimile copies and photographs. His Inscriptions of the Iron Age were published as Vol. I in 2000, and the great Luwian-Phoenician Bilingual in collaboration with Halet Çambel as Vol. II in 1999. Vol. III will present the Inscriptions of the Hittite Empire along with the newly discovered Iron Age inscriptions, thus completing the whole corpus. It will then make available to the scholarly world the Luwian language in its Hieroglyphic manifestation, which will be of importance to philologists and ancient historians alike.

This book publishes 323 handcopies of cuneiform tablets found in the academic papers of W. G. Lambert (1926–2011), one of the foremost Assyriologists of the twentieth century. Prepared by A. R. George and Junko Taniguchi, it completes a two-part edition of Lambert’s previously unpublished handcopies. Written by Babylonian and Assyrian scribes in ancient Mesopotamia, the texts collected here are organized by genre and presented with a descriptive catalogue and indexes. The contents include omen literature, divinatory rituals, religious texts, a scribal parody of Babylonian scholarship, theological and religious texts, lexical lists, god lists, and a small group of miscellaneous texts of various genres. The tablets are mainly from the British Museum, but some come from museums in Baghdad, Berlin, Chicago, Geneva, Istanbul, Jerusalem, New Haven, Oxford, Paris, Philadelphia, Tokyo, Toronto, and Washington. In addition, there are copies of eight tablets whose current whereabouts are unknown. This third collection of Lambert’s handcopies published by Eisenbrauns—following Babylonian Creation Myths and Cuneiform Texts from the Folios of W. G. Lambert, Part One—is a crucial part of the intellectual history of the field of Assyriology. In addition, many of these texts are published herein for the first time, making them a valuable and important resource for further study.

W. G. Lambert’s line drawings of cuneiform tablets from the British Museum, together with his meticulous editions of their contents, form a contribution to Assyriology unrivaled in his generation. Upon his death in 2011, Lambert bequeathed his academic legacy to A. R. George, who discovered among its contents approximately 1,400 unpublished pencil drawings. He and Junko Taniguchi took over the task of converting the drawings into images suitable for publication. The first of two planned volumes, this book features drawings of 329 cuneiform tablets found in Lambert’s academic papers. Written by Babylonian and Assyrian scribes between 2500 and 35 BC, the texts in this volume are organized by genre and provided with a descriptive catalogue and indexes. The contents include commemorative and votive inscriptions, late copies of royal inscriptions and royal correspondence, historical and historical-literary texts, Sumerian literature, Akkadian-language compositions of mythological and “epic” content, Babylonian and Assyrian hymns, prayers and praise poetry, incantations, wisdom literature, and fragments of unidentified literary works. The mass of unpublished cuneiform tablets in museums remains a largely unexplored resource with enormous capacity to illuminate all aspects of life in ancient Mesopotamia. This collection constitutes an important milestone on the road to a fuller comprehension of the written legacy of the ancient Babylonians.