The volume under review here is a collection of selected scholarly articles by William W. Hallo, Professor Emeritus of Assyriology and Babylonian Literature at Yale University, with an introduction by two of his erstwhile students, Peter Machinist and Piotr Michalowski.
William Hallo is without any doubt among the most prolific and influential scholars in the field of cuneiform studies – and especially its sub-branch of Sumerology – from the beginning of the second half of the twentieth century onwards. His works were instrumental in shaping Sumerology, and cuneiform studies in general, into their current state of development. Many of them have resisted the ravages of time and are still indispensable tools and sources of inspiring ideas not only for Assyriologists but also for historians of antiquity as well as biblical and religious scholars. For instance, his doctoral thesis Early Mesopotamian Royal Titles: A Philologic and Historical Analysis (New Haven, 1957) is still in print (reprint 1988) more than half a century after its first appearance and continues to be acknowledged as a basic study by anyone seriously interested in the early history of Babylonia.
It is therefore to be appreciated that forty-five of Hallo's key papers on the subject, hitherto dispersed in various journals, edited volumes and a dictionary, have been collected in this splendidly designed volume produced by Brill in keeping with the publisher's traditionally high quality standards.
As the title suggests, Hallo's Sumerological works are included, yet because his expertise is much broader, covering virtually all aspects of ancient Near Eastern studies with a focus on the cuneiform record, Biblical and Jewish studies, some of his papers devoted to comparing Mesopotamian and Biblical literature also appear here.
The book is divided into ten parts. The first, “Programmatics”, contains Hallo's crucial papers on the nature of Sumerian literature, its Sitz im Leben, problems involved in its interpretation, the chronology of Sumerian literary output, etc. The second offers reprints of the author's articles on literary “Catalogues and other scholia”, while the third part contains contributions dealing with Sumerian royal and divine hymns. The next section consists of his papers devoted to letter-prayers, i.e. petitions addressed to powerful individuals (either human or divine) who were supposed to remedy the writer's uneasy situation. There follows a section on the interesting and oft-discussed Sumerian royal correspondence. This part consists mainly of Hallo's editions of letters by members of the early Old Babylonian dynasty of Larsa. The next part is devoted to Sumerian historiographical texts, such as the Sumerian King List, and to theoretical issues of the value and use of those texts, but also of royal hymns and literary correspondence, for a reconstruction of history. The next three sections present Hallo's contributions to the study of myths and epics, proverbs and incantations. The concluding part of the volume fittingly deals with comparisons of Sumerian literature with Biblical texts, for the author belongs among the principal proponents of comparative approach to both text groups. The book is rounded off by detailed indexes of texts quoted, subjects discussed, personal, divine and geographic names mentioned, as well as Akkadian and Sumerian words found in the volume.
The whole collection is a balanced mixture of Hallo's treatises on theoretical and methodological issues with his text editions and interpretations of particular literary, historical, religious and ideological phenomena.
Papers included in each section are well chosen, although it is always possible to find some which in the opinion of others should either have been included or left out. Thus the present reviewer misses Hallo's important article on the degree and limits of scepticism applied by modern scholars to the search for historical data in literary texts (in Journal of the American Oriental Society 110, 1990, 187–99), and believes that the edition of hymn Urnamma D, previously called “The Coronation of Urnamma”, (no. 2 in part III, pp. 187–202 in the book) might perhaps have been omitted, for it has recently been shown that the coronation rhetoric was added to the text by Old Babylonian scholars for educational purposes and therefore it does not and cannot bear on the actual coronation rites of the Ur III king, as the author assumed in 1966 when the article was first published (see S. Tinney, Journal of Cuneiform Studies 51, 1999, 31–54).
As far as questions of style are concerned it may be difficult to follow the references given in footnotes, particularly for readers not well versed in Assyriological literature. The respective papers are generally reprinted in their original form (sometimes with additions, especially to the bibliography), and therefore the reader encounters several different styles of citation as well as scores of specialized abbreviations, sometimes explained at the end of the given paper, sometimes not (depending on the article's original format). On the other hand, every reader will appreciate that papers included in the book are carefully cross-referenced. It is to be regretted, however, that it was not possible to include Hallo's handcopies of relevant cuneiform tablets in the reprints of his text editions although, as the author states in the preface, these will be included in his forthcoming publication of Sumerian royal literature in the Yale Babylonian Collection.
In conclusion, the volume is a very welcome and useful collection of papers for the Sumerologist, as it includes Hallo's crucial contributions to the discussion of major genres of Sumerian belles-lettres and the various problems involved in the interpretation of this ancient literature. Yet for every interested reader, not just Sumerologists, this book bears vivid testimony to the vast knowledge, originality, industriousness, enthusiasm and passion of a great scholar for the central field of his research, and will remain a monument to his unceasing effort to advance cuneiform studies.
