A Babylonian Ration Document from the Hatay Archeology Museum

Abstract

The tablet with inventory number 11883, which was purchased and brought to the Hatay Archaeology Museum, belongs to an archive discovered at Alalah but now preserved in the British Museum. Access to this archive was provided as a result of the excavations carried out in Alalah (Tell Atchana), thus revealing the Kingdom of Mukiš/Alalah, whose royal center was Alalah (Reyhanlı/Hatay). The tablets obtained from Alalah were accepted as one of the main sources for the Middle and Late Bronze Age of the Eastern Mediterranean geography, along with other archives related to the period, and these tablets were mentioned in the literature as the Alalah Tablets. The content of the cuneiform tablets constituting this archive consisted mostly of commercial documents, royal decree texts, population records, and king lists. To the extent that they were reflected in the tablets, the main goods that shaped commercial life of the time consisted of mines and local productions specific to the Amuq Plain and soldiers, workers, or slaves determined in line with the needs of the palace. The document numbered 11883, which will be discussed here for the first time, has been dated to Alalah Level IV with both grammatical and paleographic features and personal names recorded in the Middle Babylonian writing tradition of Akkadian, the diplomatic language of the period, as far as it can be deciphered. In this study, the transliteration and translation of the text with inventory number 11883 have been made, and the general political and commercial outlook of the level thought to belong to the tablet has been presented. Here, the K/Qadume place name, which is thought to be mentioned in lines 2, 4, and 7 of the relevant text, was also emphasized.