This volume is intended as a tribute to the memory of the Sumerologist Jeremy Black, who died in 2004. The Sumerian phrase zà-mí-zu dug-ga-àm 'Your praise is sweet' is commonly addressed to a deity at the close of a work of Sumerian literature. The scope of the thirty contributions, from Sumerology to the nineteenth-century rediscovery of Mesopotamia, is testament to Jeremy's own wide-ranging interests and to his ability to forge scholarly connections and friendships among all who shared his interest in ancient Iraq.
Preface; Bibliography of Jeremy Black’s publications; Rank at the court of Ebla; Disenchanted with the gods? The advent of accurate prediction and its influence on scholarly attitudes towards the supernatural in ancient Mesopotamia and ancient Greece; Rara avis: a study of the !U section of the Sa Vocabulary; Sumerian word classes reconsidered; The Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature: an all-in-one corpus?; Heralds of the heroic: the functions of Angimdimma’s monsters; Late Babylonian Lugale; Bilgames and the Bull of Heaven: cuneiform texts, collations and textual reconstruction; Assyria at Bisitun and the universal kingship of Darius I of Persia; Un festival nippurite à l’époque paléobabylonienne; Arithmetical tablets from Iraqi excavations in the Diyala; Relative clauses in Sumerian revisited: an interpretation of lu2 and ni"2 from a syntactic; Observations on the literary structure of early Mesopotamian building and votive inscriptions; Reconsidering the consecration of priests in ancient Mesopotamia; Navigations, voyages, traffics and discoveries: early European travellers to Mesopotamia; Scribal schooling in Old Babylonian Kish: the evidence of the Oxford tablets; Dismembering Enki and Ninhursaga; Adamah, Kima and the miners of Laga; A prohibition on onion growing in pre-Sargonic Laga!?; Gatekeepers and lock masters: the control of access in Assyrian palaces; How many miles to Babylon?; A divine body: new joins in the Sippar Collection; Skepsis gegenüber väterlicher Weisheit: Zum altbabylonischen Dialog zwischen Vater und Sohn; Ur III kings in images: a reappraisal; On the interpretation of two critical passages in Gilgame! and Huwawa; Notes on the shape of the Aratta epics; Guardians of tradition: Early Dynastic lexical texts in Old Babylonian copies; Oath and sovereignty: Hesiod’s Theogony, Enuma Eli!, and The Kingship in Heaven; Hymns to Ninisina and Nergal on the tablets Ash 1911.235 and Ni 9672; Afterword; Bibliography
