From Mesopotamia to Lebanon and Back

The former collection of cuneiform tablets in the Nabu Museum (El Heri, Lebanon) now held in the Iraq Museum of Baghdad

Abstract

Thanks to a mutual friend, Bertrand Lafont was made aware of the existence of the Jawad
Adra Collection of cuneiform texts in 2007 in Beirut. Jawad Adra welcomed Lafont
warmly and subsequently provided him with access to his cuneiform collection with the
explicit wish to prepare a publication to make its contents available not only to the scholarly
community but also to the public at large. Lafont’s first visit to the Adra Collection took
place during the following October of 2008 at which time he was able to make a
preliminary survey and catalogue of the collection. In September of 2009, David I. Owen
happened to inquire about the contents of the collection while researching his book on the
Irisaĝrig archives.2 This resulted in Lafont’s invitation to Owen to join in the publication
of the collection as it contained many tablets from Irisaĝrig. With characteristic generosity,
Adra welcomed Owen to this effort and provided the wherewithal that made possible a
series of visits to El Heri, in north Lebanon, to facilitate the study and publication of his
collection. The first joint study session took place in October 2010 during which the initial
transliterations of the tablets were prepared, facilitated by the preliminary survey prepared
by Lafont in 2008. Additional sessions, individually or jointly, took place in July 2011
(also with Renée Kovacs-Gallery), in October 2011, during which the conservation of the
tablets was completed, and was followed by another in May 2012, for collations (also with
a visit by Jack M. Sasson). The publication of 144 texts, dating to the Third Dynasty of Ur
(hereafter Ur III, ca. 2106-2000 BCE), appeared the following year in 2013 in Owen’s
Nisaba 15. The current volume was completed after Owen’s visit to the CNRS in Nanterre,
France, in May 2013, followed by Lafont’s visit to Cornell University, Ithaca, New York,
in August 2013, and Owen again to the CNRS in Nanterre in June 2015. A final visit to El
Heri took place in May 2017 (then joined also by Camille Lecompte).