Archaische Texte aus Uruk V: Archaic Administrative Texts from Uruk, the Early Campaigns

Robert K. Englund's Archaic Administrative Texts from Uruk is a specialist scholarly edition of some of the earliest known written texts, proto-cuneiform administrative tablets from the Uruk IV period, prepared by one of the foremost living authorities on early Mesopotamian writing and administration. Its authority rests on direct philological and archaeological command of an extraordinarily difficult corpus, texts that predate fully developed cuneiform and remain only partially deciphered even by specialists. As a technical edition aimed at cuneiform scholars, it is authoritative on the texts' administrative content, largely records of goods and labor rather than religious material, and it is properly read as primary evidence for early Mesopotamian bureaucracy and economy rather than as a source for early Mesopotamian religious belief specifically.