Comprising some 45,000 items, the Yale Babylonian Collection is an independent branch of the Yale University Library housed on the

Yale University Yale University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701, Yale is the List of Colonial Colleges, third-oldest institution of higher education in the United Stat ...

campus in

Sterling Memorial Library Sterling Memorial Library (SML) is the main library, library building of the Yale University Library system in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Opened in 1931, the library was designed by James Gamble Rogers as the centerpiece of Yale's Go ...

New Haven New Haven is a city of the U.S. state of Connecticut. It is located on New Haven Harbor on the northern shore of Long Island Sound. With a population of 135,081 as determined by the 2020 U.S. census, New Haven is the third largest city in Co ...

Connecticut Connecticut ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It borders Rhode Island to the east, Massachusetts to the north, New York (state), New York to the west, and Long Island Sound to the south. ...

United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

. In 2017, the collection was affiliated to the Peabody Museum of Natural History. Established by the donation of a collection of

cuneiform Cuneiform is a Logogram, logo-Syllabary, syllabic writing system that was used to write several languages of the Ancient Near East. The script was in active use from the early Bronze Age until the beginning of the Common Era. Cuneiform script ...

tablets by

J. P. Morgan John Pierpont Morgan Sr. (April 17, 1837 – March 31, 1913) was an American financier and investment banker who dominated corporate finance on Wall Street throughout the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. As the head of the banking firm that ...

in 1909, the Collection is now home to one of the largest collections of ancient

Near East The Near East () is a transcontinental region around the Eastern Mediterranean encompassing the historical Fertile Crescent, the Levant, Anatolia, Egypt, Mesopotamia, and coastal areas of the Arabian Peninsula. The term was invented in the 20th ...

ern writing in America and ranks among the best repositories of its kind in the world. Beyond the ongoing study and conservation of its own holdings, the Yale

Babylon Babylon ( ) was an ancient city located on the lower Euphrates river in southern Mesopotamia, within modern-day Hillah, Iraq, about south of modern-day Baghdad. Babylon functioned as the main cultural and political centre of the Akkadian-s ...

ian Collection stands as an important center for innovative research in Assyriology and other related fields. Since 2019 all cuneiform artifacts as well as cylinder and stamp seals are being digitized. These digital assets will be freely available in a number of online repositories. The collection contains over 1,300 private and official letters that span several different time periods in Babylonian history. Several of these letters were still sealed in their clay envelopes to only be opened and read for the first time when they entered the collection. The collection is open on weekdays by appointment. Among the highlights of the collection are several tablets dating to the first half of the second millennium BCE, which contain culinary recipes. File:Net cylinder of Entemena.jpg, "Net cylinder" of Entemena, the second known cylinder describing the border conflict between

Lagash Lagash (; cuneiform: LAGAŠKI; Sumerian language, Sumerian: ''Lagaš'') was an ancient city-state located northwest of the junction of the Euphrates and Tigris rivers and east of Uruk, about east of the modern town of Al-Shatrah, Iraq. Lagash ( ...

and

Umma Umma () in modern Dhi Qar Province in Iraq, was an ancient city in Sumer. There is some scholarly debate about the Sumerian and Akkadian names for this site. Traditionally, Umma was identified with Tell Jokha. More recently it has been sugges ...

, circa 2500 BCE. File:Entemena Net Cylinder Transcription.jpg, Full text of the War inscription by Entemena, in the Net Cylinder File:Mesilim Lugal Kish-ki on the Net Vase of Entemena.jpg, ''Mesilim Lugal Kish-ki'' (), " Mesilim, King of

Kish Kish may refer to: Businesses and organisations * KISH, a radio station in Guam * Kish Air, an Iranian airline * Korean International School in Hanoi, Vietnam People * Kish (surname), including a list of people with the name * Kish, a former ...

", on the "Net Cylinder" of Entemena

References

External links

About the Yale Babylonian Collection, with photographs.
Museums established in 1910 Babylonian Collection Collections of museums in Connecticut Babylonian art and architecture Clay tablets Museums of the ancient Near East in the United States {{library-stub

See also

References

External links