Archives and Libraries in the Old Babylonian Period, c.1900–1600 BCE

In this chapter two substantial textual assemblages of Sumerian literary compositions from Ur and Nippur (two major urban centres in southern Mesopotamia in the late third and early second millennium) are described and compared to address the question of the extent to which assemblages such as these can be considered textual archives or libraries. Particular emphasis is given to the types of compositions that are found in the two assemblages, as well as to how the archaeological contexts in which the assemblages were discovered and the material aspects of the texts themselves (the format and layout of the clay tablets on which the compositions were copied) might shed light on how and why the texts in these assemblages were copied (and possibly archived) as a group.