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Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (CDLI)
In these pages, the Department of the Middle East of the British Museum and the Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (CDLI), an international research project based at the University of California, Los Angeles, present a database of the inscribed objects in the London collection. In an initial phase of this collaboration funded by a grant from by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Jonathan Taylor and Marieka Arksey digitized the library and archives of Ashurbanipal, King of Assyria. A series of excavations at the mound of Kuyunjik (ancient Nineveh) during the 19th and early 20th centuries discovered 30,000 tablets and fragments (a number reduced by joins and other corrections to a current total of 24,745 in CDLI files). These texts underpin cuneiform studies, and still form a core resource for our understanding of the social and intellectual history of ancient Mesopotamia. Added to BM entries otherwise made by CDLI staff to its core catalogue in the course of our general capture, we now show a total of nearly 72,000 cuneiform artefacts in the Museums holdings, of a grand total that may approach 200,000. Introduction to the collection
BM artefacts by period:
BM artefacts by provenience:
Alalakh Amarna Babylon Borsippa Diqdiqqah Drehem Eridu Fara Girsu Jemdet Nasr Kish Kültepe Larsa Nineveh Nimrud Nippur Nuzi Sippar Tell Brak Ubaid Umma Ur Uruk unclear
BM artefacts by text genre:
BM artefacts by type:
The tablet to the right (K 828) contains a neo-Assyrian period cuneiform letter from King Ashurbanipal, written in his capital city, Nineveh (ca. 650 BC; click image to be directed to the text’s corresponding CDLI page).
