Wooden Wax-Covered Writing Boards as Vorlage for kudurru Inscriptions in the Middle Babylonian Period

Abstract

Abstract The inscriptions on Middle Babylonian kudurru monuments contain references to a certain type of Vorlage, wooden wax-covered writing boards. The kudurru monuments were erected in temples as (legal) proof of a royal land grant. In this article I explore three ways in which wooden wax-covered writing boards may have functioned as a Vorlage for kudurru inscriptions. Wooden wax-covered writing boards may have served as a Vorlage for literary passages, as a draft for the kudurru inscription or as a writing material for land survey documents (possibly the Middle Babylonian ammatu documents). Firstly, parallels between the colophons of kudurru inscriptions and first millennium literary and scholarly texts imply a shared scholarly practice in a temple context, in which wooden wax-covered writing boards were used as a Vorlage. Secondly, the use of wooden wax-covered writing boards to draft monumental inscriptions is well attested in the 1st millennium BC. Thirdly, I propose that writing boards may have been used to record the land survey necessary for the royal land grant, since land surveys and ground plans were traditionally recorded on writing boards in Mesopotamia. Wooden wax-covered writing boards and wooden writing materials became more widespread in the Middle Babylonian period. The Middle Babylonian land survey document was called ammatu document. Further, in this article I demonstrate that the equation of the Middle Babylonian ammatu document with the Old Babylonian ṭuppi ummātim, a term for title deeds written on clay tablets, is problematic.