The dissertation project investigates the "Names and Professions List". This list is known through representatives from Fāra and Tell Abū Ṣalābīḫ (FD IIIa or Fāra, ca. 2575-2475 BC) and the Palace Archive of Ebla (ca. 2360-2310 BC) and is attributed to the North Babylonian list tradition. Formally, it is a list of personal names paired with job titles and occasionally toponyms. Thus it has characteristics of administrative documents such as personal registers and differs considerably from other list formats. Until today, the origin and function of the "Names and Professions List" are still controversial; so far a complete edition is a desideratum.

To close this academic void, all text representatives will be edited and analysed. Within this framework, a detailed index of names and job titles will be created. Subsequently, the "Names and Professions List" will be compared to contemporary administrative texts, documents and inscriptions, as well as lexical lists, in order to contextualise them temporally and geographically. By evaluating this data, it will finally be determined where and to what purpose the "Names and Professions List" was composed.

 

Supervisors: PD Dr. Ingo Schrakamp, Prof. Dr. Manfred Krebernik

Financial support provided by an Elsa Neumann Fellowship