§1. Introduction

§1.1. This article presents for the first time four artefacts in the private collection of Duncan Budge, to whom I am very grateful for the loan of these objects and the permission to publish them. The collection consists of two Old Babylonian administrative texts, an Old Babylonian votive plaque, and a bulla with a seal impression. I am also grateful to Parsa Daneshmand for his comments and suggestions on my editions.

§2. Acquisition History and Provenience

§2.1. The objects come without any information of their original provenience. The current owner inherited them from his father, who in turn received them from Arthur Lionel Forster Smith. Smith had served in India and Iraq during the First World War, and in the period 1920–1931 was Director and Advisor of Education in Iraq.^[1] During his time in Iraq, Smith was involved in the management of antiquities recovered from excavations, as is seen also in the letters of Gertrude Bell, a friend of Smith’s.^[2] These letters reference his visits to sites and his assistance in the dividing up of finds in places such as Babylon, Ur, and Kish.^[3] The Middle East Centre Archive of St Anthony’s College, Oxford also contains photos of and by Smith of digs at Ur and Eridu (‘Abu Shaqrain’ (sic)).^[4]

§2.2. From these and other sources,^[5] it is clear that Smith often handled ancient Mesopotamian artefacts as part of his official duties. It is not known, however, when or where he obtained the objects presented here. Nonetheless, two items which were kept with the collection help to narrow down when the artefacts were brought to the UK and given to the father of the current owner. One is the container in which they were originally stored. This was a tobacco tin stuffed with cotton wool (Figure 1). While not an ideal storage method,^[6] the style of tin went out of use in roughly 1970, though the rust and decolouration suggest this particular one is considerable older, and this can help to narrow down when the artefacts may have been brought to the UK. This likely occurred in or before 1931 when Smith returned to the UK.^[7] Likewise, a fragment of an envelope addressed to A. L. F. Smith was also kept with the tin (Figure 2). The Edinburgh address indicates that it must have been given to the current owner’s father in or after 1931, when Smith became Rector of Edinburgh Academy, a post he held until 1945. The current owner vaguely recalls that his father was given the tablets by a parent at Rossall Junior School where he was headmaster from c. 1955, and where Smith’s son may have studied, though this has not been verified. He was told that the artefacts may have come from the excavations at Ur, but without a reliable record of provenience, this cannot be confirmed.

§3. Uninscribed artefacts

§3.1. Besides the two texts, the collection also contains a bulla (P546785, 36x47x11mm, Figure 3) with the cylinder seal impression depicting a contest scene. The top edge of the bulla has possible traces of writing, but these are not legible. The fourth artefact (Figure 4) is a typical Old Babylonian votive plaque depicting a female figure in prayer (52x47x20mm). The bottom half from the waist down is missing, perhaps having been broken deliberately in antiquity (Graff 2013, 378). It is otherwise well preserved and has clear finger imprints from when it was made in a mould.

§4. Inscribed artefacts

§4.1. Text 1 (P546783)

Dimensions: 62x43x20mm
Period: Old Babylonian
Provenience: Unknown
Date: -/6/-
Genre: Receipt of grain

§4.1.1 Description

§4.1.2 Text 1 is in mostly good condition, though it has undergone some restoration prior to its acquisition by the current owner. It came with a small fragment broken off from the beginning of line 3 of the obverse which could not be reattached. The text of the tablet is mostly well preserved and written in a mostly neat script. The format and palaeography of the text is that of the Old Babylonian period, though the orthography potentially indicates a late Old Babylonian date. If the reading of rev. 7 is correct, the month name niqmum may help to narrow down the original provenience of this text, though the exact origin cannot be determined on other grounds. The text lists the amounts of grain delivered by Appan-ili, who is perhaps the overseer of the cooks, to Adbarraba. Part of the amount which Appan-ili initially received seems to have been deducted as payment for some other goods (obv. 8-rev. 5).

§4.1.3. Transliteration and Translation

§4.1.4. Commentary

obv. 7. The use of ša₂, otherwise rare in the Old Babylonian period when ša is the norm, perhaps suggests a later date within this period, though the use of ša₂ is also occasionally found throughout the period, including in earlier Old Babylonian texts, such as JCS 4, 112, obv. 5, 11 (Sin-iddinam 5); UCP 10-01, 16, obv. 5; UCP 10-01, 55, obv. 5 (both from the reign of Ibal-piel); VS 08, 13, obv. 13’. (reign of Sabium); MHET 2/1, 018, obv. 8 (reign of Sumu-la-El). As in the text edited here, the majority of these texts use ša₂ to write the relative pronoun rather than the possessive.

rev. 4. SA₁₀ appears to be written NINDA₂xAN (MZL 320), which is unusual for the Old Babylonian period, when it is normally NINDA₂xŠE.AM₃ (Steinkeller 1989: 154).

rev. 5-7. If the reconstruction [UGULA] MUḪALDIM is correct, the overseer of the cooks is in this case apparently responsible for the delivery of goods. In the Sealand I period, cooks and their overseers are also found as carrying out deliveries of animal carcasses (Boivin 2016: 12). The month name niqmum, West Semitic in origin, is attested only in a few sites, including Mari, Ešnunna, Šaduppum, and Diyala. It also appears at Tell Leilan, Chagar Bazar, Tell Rimah, which shared the same calendar (Cohen 1993: 248, 250, 253-254, 256-257) and is also attested in Tell Bi’a (KTT 79-81, 85, 111, 168-169).

§4.2. Text 2 (P546784)

Dimensions: 36(W)x28-29mm(D)
Period: Old Babylonian
Provenience: Unknown
Date: -/9/25
Genre: Receipt of grain

§4.2.1 Description

§4.2.2 Text 2 is an Old Babylonian bulla, the text of which is almost fully preserved, though written in a rather untidy script.

§4.2.3 Transliteration and Translation

§4.2.4. Commentary

3. One Ebirum, son of Uštani-ilum is found as a witness in at least two contracts from Sippar for built-up house plots (BDHP 78 and VS 9, 131-132), dating to the 30th and 35th years respectively of the reign of Hammurapi. It may be the same Ebirum who appears in OIM A35208 (Hammurapi 27).

11. The divine name ^dga-am-tuḫ-a is, to my knowledge, only attested once elsewhere, on an Old Babylon cylinder seal (IAA 65-186).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bell, G. L., and F. E. E. Bell. 1927. The Letters of Gertrude Bell. London.

Boivin, O. 2016. “Accounting for Livestock: Principles of Palatial Administration in Sealand I Babylonia.” Iraq 78: 3–23.

Cohen, M. E. 1993. The Cultic Calendars of the Ancient Near East. Bethesda, Md.

Edmonds, C. J. 1973. “Obituary: Arthur Lionel Forster Smith.” Iraq 35 (1): i–ii.

Graff, S. B. 2013. “Sexuality, Reproduction and Gender in Terracotta Plaques from the Late Third–Early Second Millennia BCE.” In Critical Approaches to Ancient Near Eastern Art, edited by B. A. Brown and M. H. Feldman, 371–90. Berlin.

Hodgkin, E. C. 1979. Arthur Lionel Forster Smith, 1880–1972: Chapters of Biography.

Nadkarni, D. 2020. “A Plaster Cast of a Mesopotamian Lioness in the Durham Oriental Museum.” In Studies in Archaeological Conservation, edited by C. Caple and V. Garlick, 39–47. London.

Footnotes

• ^[1] Details of Smith’s life and his time in Iraq can be found in Hodgkin (1979). I am grateful to the librarians of Balliol College, Oxford for making a copy of this available to me.
• ^[2] Pictures and transcripts of Bell’s letters can be found on the website of the Gertrude Bell Archive at Newcastle University: https://gertrudebell.ncl.ac.uk/, and transcripts of others are to be found in Bell & Bell (1927, see Volume II for those mentioning A. L. F. Smith).
• ^[3] See the letters dated 17th September 1924; 27th January 1926; 16th March 1926; 31st March 1926. Photos of Smith and Bell at Kish in 1926 are also published online by the Gertrude Bell Archive.
• ^[4] I am grateful to the archivists for allowing me to consult their materials pertaining to Smith.
• ^[5] See also the obituary of Smith written by Edmonds (1973), and Nadkarni (2020: 39).
• ^[6] This seems to have been a frequent failing of Smith’s, even by the standards of the time. See, for example, the letter of Gertrude Bell dated to 16th March 1926: “I’m very fond of him as a person to talk to but when it comes to thinking about boxes and straw or cotton wool to pack with he isn’t much good, poor dear.” See also Nadkarni (2020: 46).
• ^[7] See also Nadkarni (2020: 46).

Version: 2025-10-02

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