The career of Wilfred George Lambert, among the giants of twentieth-century Assyriology, spanned almost 60 years. Although Lambert wrote numerous articles and chapters on ancient Mesopotamian religion and mythology, he was most famous for his publications of cuneiform texts. In addition to his four widely used books – Babylonian Wisdom Literature (1960); Atra-ḫasīs: The Babylonian Flood Story (1969, with A.R. Millard); Babylonian Oracle Questions (2007); and Babylonian Creation Myths (2013) – Lambert published numerous editions of Sumero-Akkadian literary texts, typically accompanied by his meticulous copies of cuneiform tablets. Lambert was revered for his knowledge – perhaps matched only by Rylke Borger's – of the British Museum's cuneiform tablet collections, and in particular, the Kouyunjik collection. Lambert's corrections of other scholars’ interpretations, frequently proffered via reference to new but unpublished duplicates or joins, was a familiar occurrence at meetings of the Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale.
On Thursdays Lambert habitually visited the Student Room of the British Museum to examine cuneiform texts housed there; among those who knew him, it was dubbed, “Lambert-day”. Many scholars and students of Assyriology made the most of “Lambert-day” to meet him in person, ask questions, and obtain his help in reading almost illegible signs or interpreting difficult phrases. He was generous, taking time to answer queries or give advice – as long as one was not treading on his toes. On occasion, he gave young scholars the museum registration numbers of unpublished texts he had identified. When one sought information about unpublished duplicates and joins of texts whose editions he was preparing (such as Enūma eliš or the god-list An-Anum), however, he replied to the enquiries with a short statement, “I am working on it”, a clear signal that these texts were off limits.
When Lambert passed away on 9 November 2011, he left his notes, mostly consisting of transliterations, joins, duplicates, and identifications of texts, on over 1,400 pages of notebooks and 6,000 loose paper slips (Lambert Notebooks) alongside approximately 1,400 copies of cuneiform texts, mostly not inked (Lambert Folios). Unlike “Geers Copies” – the thousands of freehand copies of cuneiform texts, mostly literary, drawn by Friedrich Wilhelm Geers in 1924–1939 – the cuneiform copies in Lambert's Nachlass were carefully drawn in the distinctive style he established early in his academic career. Obviously, he was planning to publish them with text editions.
When the severity of Lambert's illness was first whispered, scholars feared that his remaining work might be retained by a small circle of scholars, or languish in a cabinet at the British Museum, as thousands of Theophilus G. Pinches’ copies, prepared in the late nineteenth century but unpublished until their posthumous appearance between 1955 and 1982, had done. Upon his death, however, Lambert bequeathed his scholarly legacy to A.R. George, who swiftly catalogued the contents of Lambert's notebooks and made the scans widely accessible on AWOL: The Notebooks of W.G. Lambert Online. At the same time, together with Junko Taniguchi, George began processing Lambert's copies for publication – collating, digitally inking, and cataloguing them with indexes. The present volume represents the first of a planned two volumes of Lambert's unpublished hand copies of cuneiform texts.
On p. vii, George and Taniguchi explain that, while they and Henry Buglass digitally inked the majority of the copies, some had already been inked by hand by Lambert himself. It is stunning how George, Taniguchi, and Buglass faithfully reproduced Lambert's touch in copying the cuneiform signs; indeed it is nearly impossible to recognize distinctions among the copies of master and “students”.
Lambert had extremely good eyes, and his copies are typically highly accurate. On top of that, to ensure their reliability, each was collated by George and Taniguchi. For example, among new manuscripts of the Counsels of Wisdom (nos. 258–64) and the Great Šamaš Hymn (128–42), only one rather insignificant error in BM 68401 was detectable: (no. 261) line 8´: igi is actually igimin. (For Lambert's earlier editions, see BWL, pp. 96–107 and 126–38 respectively. Their new edition will appear in Oshima's forthcoming book in LAOS, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, which also includes texts not copied by Lambert).
Lambert took time to read almost all the signs visible on tablets, even on surfaces quite badly damaged. BM 61635+ (no. 99), a new exemplar of Prayer to Marduk no. 2 (see Lambert, AfO 19, pp. 61–6) amply attests to his mastery. Its obverse is almost illegible, with the exception of a handful of signs. As seen from his copy on p. 86, however, Lambert painstakingly copied almost all the stray signs on the obverse, including the nearly illegible ones. On the other hand, when he was not sure whether a mark on a tablet was part of a sign or just a scratch, he occasionally chose not to copy it, so as to avoid unnecessary errors.
In this volume, we encounter many new manuscripts of texts Lambert had previously published in the 1960s and 70s, including, for example, Bullussa-rabi's Hymn to Gula, Prayer to Marduk no. 1, Ludlul bēl nēmeqi, the Babylonian Theodicy, the Marduk's Address to Demons, Proverbs. In other words, unsatisfied with his initial publications because of the remaining lacunae in these texts, Lambert was always perfecting his knowledge of cuneiform literature.
Wayne Horowitz, Lambert's former student, relates the story of Lambert's camel: donated to a person suffering financial hardship in the Middle East in honour of Lambert's seventy-fifth birthday, the camel and Lambert never met, so with only a photograph to go on, Lambert never experienced the camel's strength, its beauty, or the benefits it conferred on the family who had received it. Lambert's Nachlass likewise, is a gift from a now distant benefactor to generations he will never meet, carefully tended by George and Taniguchi, whose selfless labours bring Lambert's generous, careful brilliance more fully to light.
