Keeping alive dead knowledge: Middle assyrian glass recipes in the yale babylonian collection

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Abstract

© 2021 American Society of Overseas Research. All rights reserved.Although they describe Bronze Age technologies and techniques, the Akkadian glassmaking texts are primarily known through later copies from Ashurbanipal’s libraries. The first portion of this paper provides editions of three fragments of previously unknown glass texts from the Middle Assyrian period and examines how and why they came to be written down. The second portion discusses metaphors concerning kinship and bodily experience that explain the relationship between the glassmaker in Mesopotamia, his tools, and his creative process. It is argued here that only by embracing the entire context of the craft pro-cess—this includes the behaviors chosen during manufacture as well as the allusions made to social relationships through language, performance, and materials—can we begin to appreciate how knowledge about technologies was transmitted.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)135-178
JournalJournal of Cuneiform Studies
Volume73
Issue number1
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Jan 2021
Externally publishedYes

Funding

1. This research was conducted with funding from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. A short version of this paper was presented at the 65th Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale in Paris. I am grateful to Konrad Volk, Ulrike Steinert, Eckart Frahm, and Barbara Helwing for their insightful comments on an early draft, which have greatly improved what I have written. Klaus Wagensonner’s final collations of the texts on my behalf were of infinite help. I thank Eckart Frahm and Agnete Lassen for the kind permission to publish YBC 9834A-C from the Yale Babylonian Collection and Klaus Wagensonner for the photographs.

FundersFunder number
Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung

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