Nuzi 2002 Overview

Abstract
From 1925 to 1931, a joint archaeological expedition of the American School of Oriental Research at Baghdad and the Iraq Museum, since 1927 with the participation of the Semitic Museum and the Fogg Art Museum of Harvard University excavated the ancient site of Nuzi (present day Yorghan Tepe), near modern Kirkuk/Iraq. Level II dates back to the fifteenth and fouteenth centuries BCE and has been excavated completely. For this period Nuzi has become a most important place of reference. Among the finds were ca. 5000 cuneiform tablets which were divided between the museums of the Chicago Oriental Institute, the Harvard Semitic Musuem and the Iraq Museum Baghdad.

The Nuzi archives form an exceedingly important group of sources bearing on the social conditions, economic activity and legal practices of all social strata in a period that is otherwise pourly documented. These sources have a unique potential for the case study of an Ancient Near Eastern society.

To date, most of these tablets have been published. The Harvard Semitic Museum, however, still owns a considerable number of unpublished tablets and larger fragments. There is also a large number of small fragments many of which yield very important information when joined to other fragments or fragmentary tablets that have already been published.