Spar Ira, Lambert W.G. Cuneiform Texts in The Metropolitan Museum of Art: Volume II: Literary and Scholastic Texts of the First Millennium B.C

Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2005. — 538 p.This important scholarly work is volume two in a series of four volumes that will publish all the more than six hundred cuneiform tablets in the collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Included are 106 religious, scientific, scholastic, and literary texts, written in Sumerian and Akkadian and primarily dated to the latter part of the first milennium B.C. They shed new light on the civilization of the ancient Near East—on its complex beliefs and customs and surprisingly vast knowledge of mathematics and astronomy—for both the contemporary scholar and interested reader.
The texts are organized in five sections: Documents of the Incantation Priest, Diviner, Physician, and Magician reveal various categories of omens; Literary texts present myths and legends; The Scholastic tradition contains a variety of texts and lists, including mathematical and astronomical texts; and the final section covers Unidentified Fragments. Among the most important texts are No. 42, a fragments of the Babylonian version of the ancient Flood story, and No. 81, which attests to the intellectual achievement of Babylonian astronomers.