Texts from Diyala - Paolo Gentili
This catalogue, if doesn't want to give, of course, 'all' the references and quotations about the texts from the region we are speaking of (this present work is essentially updated to 2002, even if there are some minor references to later works), wants anyway to provide a first organization of the documentation we have.
This aim has been pursued, mainly, following few general indications we adopted as main rules of our research: first of all, we limited (as the term text suggests) our exploration to written or inscribed documents of any kind, excluding, in this way, only figurative seals and, ad example, uninscribed statues or similar; secondarily, we restricted the field of examination to texts coming (or supposed to come) from the region in question, that is the area laying north-east of Baghdad, alongside the Diyala river, with all the major sites that have been excavated there; thirdly, we circumscribed the investigation to the mere indication of the museum numbers and/or (where possible) of the excavation numbers of any published or quoted (in this case we quoted also some 'unpublished' documents) text, independently from the kind of treatment it received.
Moreover, we didn't give any limit of time to this research, including in the same the Old Babylonian, the Sargonic or the pre-Sargonic texts. Following these general indications, we quoted, simply, all those references found in main discussions or notes of different degree, also as generic quotations, referred to the texts in question. In this way, we got the possibility to create a general index (always in fieri) of all the published(/unpublished) texts from the Diyala region. Obviously, we adopted a personal procedure selecting the references and, for instance, we searched for direct quotation of the text, but outside the main book where this text was dealt, that is, we did not quote all the references to an OBTIV text inside OBTIV.
As result of the research, we give, for each text found, the indication of provenance (see Abbreviations list) and a very short bibliographic references pack (see Bibliography), that allow us to identify quickly what, of that particular text, has been written, and where. This pack has been organized quoting the book of reference (author and year or abbreviation, as for OBTIV) followed by a mere number in case of indication of a text-number of that specific work, or by a number preceded by a "p." in case of an indication of page, and go on.
Some easy reading keys are inserted in the final part of that pack, for a quickly specification of the different kind of treatment given to the text, while a section for personal notes closes the list. In order to supply the document with the maximum of uniformity, we adopted, for each different quotation and where possible, an unique way of reference (for instance, in the rendering of some excavation numbers from Asmar) and we listed the documentation in alphabetical order, joining in this way museum numbers and excavation or field numbers.
At the end, a general index makes reference to all the symbols adopted in our work (see Utilities). |
texts_from_diyala.pdf
