Glimpses of the Old Babylonian Syllabary. Followed by Some Considerations on Regional Variations and Training in Letter-Writing

International audienceAvailable online: https://www.pewe-verlag.de/?page_id=1787.During the four centuries that the Old Babylonian period lasted (between 2002 BC and 1595 BC), Mesopotamian scribes used the same writing system and Akkadian dialect to write their letters. However, Old Babylonian Akkadian was a lively developing language at that time, and had no fixed written norm. Since the pioneering studies by A. Goetze and the comparison of various corpora of letters by J. G. Westenholz, research has focused on a single archaeological site or corpus, and no extensive and systematic study of the regional Old Babylonian spelling conventions has been undertaken so far. And yet, the increasing number of Old Babylonian tablets excavated and published since the 1980's encourages the resumption of such a research. In this contribution, the repertoires of signs used in letters written in the kingdoms of Babylon and Mari at the time of Kings Hammu-rabi and Zimri-Lim are examined. Then, through the study of anthroponyms, several aspects of regional variations and training in letter-writing are discussed