Matthew Stolper

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Matthew Wolfgang Stolper is Professor of Assyriology and the John A. Wilson Professor of Oriental Studies in the Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago. He received a B.A. from Harvard in 1965, an M.A. from the University of Michigan in 1967, and a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan in 1974. [1]

Professor Stolper's earlier interests were centered on Babylonian legal texts, but his most current work involves the Persepolis Fortification Project. He and a team of student employees are currently[ when? ] racing to document the Persepolis Fortification Archive, a collection of Achaemenid administrative records from Persepolis written mostly in Elamite (though a Greek and, surprisingly, an Old Persian tablet have been discovered). [2] [3]

His publications are numerous, including: The šaknu of Nippur, The Kasr Archive, Babylonian Evidence for the End of the Reign of Darius I: A Correction, A Note on Yahwistic Personal Names in the Murašû Texts, A Late-Achaemenid Lease from the Rich Collection, "Yet Another Iranian Loanword in Late Babylonian: Babyl. mašǎ̄ka < Ir. *važ̵ ā̆ka, Fifth Century Nippur: Texts of the Murašûs and from Their Surroundings, Some Ghost Facts from Achaemenid Babylonian Texts, The Governor of Babylon and Across-the-River in 486 B. C., Review: Iranians in Babylonia and A Paper Chase after the Aramaic on TCL 13 193. [4]

Among his publications on the Elamite language are: Texts from Tall-i Malyan, I: Elamite Administrative Texts (1972-1974), Elam: Surveys of Political History and Archaeology and Entrepreneurs and Empire: The Murašû Archive, the Murašû Firm, and Persian Rule in Babylonia.

In addition to doing important scholarly work, Stolper is also active in campus life at the University of Chicago. He recently argued for hamantash in The Great Latke-Hamantash Debate, an annual university tradition. Hamantash traditionally loses this debate, and Stolper's valiant efforts resulted in no change, despite the fact that he showed adorable pictures of his dog and constant companion, Baxter. [5]

Stolper also has a healthy mythology surrounding him at the Oriental Institute. He is widely credited with the invention of "Stolper's Law", which stipulates that, when translating Akkadian, an unknown adjective is likely to mean "pure", and an unknown verb probably means "destroy".

Revolutionary teaching methods have also been attributed to Stolper, who refers to himself as the "Stolperstein", or stumbling block. [6] A reference to this teaching method can be found on the forthcoming Latke-Hamantash debate DVD, as the moderator cited it before Professor Stolper's speech.

Stolper is also renowned for his quips concerning the Akkadian language. As one of his students fondly recalls in an entry entitled "Akkadian is so easy", he told his class:

"It takes only a couple of years to learn all the Akkadian you need to pass a comprehensive exam. It takes much longer to get a degree in French Lit, so obviously Akkadian is easier than French. Those scribes had pretty short life spans, so it must not take too long to get good at Akkadian. Reading a newspaper in English is 100 times more complex than reading a cuneiform tablet." [7]

There are similar accounts concerning Old Persian:

"For a modern student, to learn the Old Persian script is a work of scarcely an hour. For a literate ancient speaker of the language, for whom the ambiguities left by the orthographic rules were not an obstacle, it would have been a work of minutes."

[7]

Much like Schrödinger's cat, the Persepolis Fortification Team has discussed the possibility of writing a book entitled Stolper's Dog: The Secret Wisdom of the Elamites. It would include such pithy sayings as:

“No-one has exact information except for you.”- A communication between Babylon and Uruk in the first Achaemenid reigns. [8]

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Eber-Nari Province of the Achaemenid Empire

Eber-Nari, also referred to as Transeuphratia by modern scholars, was a region of Western Asia and a satrapy of the Neo-Assyrian Empire, Neo-Babylonian Empire and Achaemenid Empire. The Akkadian Eber-Nari is referred to as Athura or Athuriya in Old Persian, and Aššur in the Elamite. The Targum Onkelos lists Nineveh, Calah, Reheboth, and Resen as being in the jurisdiction of Athura.

First Sealand dynasty

The First Sealand dynasty, (URU.KÙKI) or the 2nd Dynasty of Babylon, very speculatively c. 1732–1460 BC, is an enigmatic series of kings attested to primarily in laconic references in the king lists A and B, and as contemporaries recorded on the Assyrian Synchronistic king list A.117. The dynasty, which had broken free of the short lived, and by this time crumbling Old Babylonian Empire, was named for the province in the far south of Mesopotamia, a swampy region bereft of large settlements which gradually expanded southwards with the silting up of the mouths of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Sealand pottery has been found at Girsu, Uruk, and Lagash but in no site north of that. The later kings bore pseudo-Sumerian names and harked back to the glory days of the dynasty of Isin. The third king of the dynasty was even named for the ultimate king of the dynasty of Isin, Damiq-ilišu. Despite these cultural motifs, the population predominantly bore Akkadian names and wrote and spoke in the Akkadian language. There is circumstantial evidence that their rule extended at least briefly to Babylon itself. In later times, a Sealand province of the Neo-Babylonian Empire also existed.

Kudur-Enlil, rendered in cuneiform as Ku-durdEN.LÍL, “son of Enlil,” was the 26th king of the 3rd or Kassite dynasty of Babylon. He reigned into his ninth year, as attested in contemporary economic tablets. His relationship with his predecessor and successor is uncertain and does not appear in contemporary inscriptions. The personal name “Marduk is king of the gods” first appears during his reign marking the deity’s ascendancy to the head of the pantheon.

Zababa-shuma-iddin King of Babylon

Zababa-šuma-iddina was the 35th and penultimate king of the Kassite or 3rd dynasty of Babylon, who reigned for just one year, ca. 1158 BC. He was without apparent ties to the royal family and there is uncertainty concerning the circumstances of his coming to power.

Enlil-nadin-ahi King of Babylon

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The house of Murashu were a family discovered in archaeological findings dating to the late 19th century. The family were alive during the fifth century BC in Nippur, participating in early economic activities.

The Murašû Archive is a collection of cuneiform tablets, excavated between 1888 and 1900, from the ruins of Nippur in central Babylonia. Named after the chief member of a single family, the Murašû Archive is a collection of business records that spans four generations. Assembled during the reigns of the Persian kings Artaxerxes I, Darius II, and Artaxerxes II, the Murašû Archive provides the largest and most illuminating view into the business activities and conditions of Persian-ruled Babylonia during the last hundred and fifty years of the Achaemenid kingship.

Nidin-Bel King of Babylon

Nidin-Bel might have been a rebel king of Babylon who in the autumn of 336 BC and/or the winter of 336–335 BC attempted to restore Babylonia as an independent kingdom and end the rule of the Persian Achaemenid Empire in the region. The only known surviving reference which points to there being a ruler by this name in Babylon is the Uruk King List, which records rulers of Babylon from the 7th to 3rd centuries BC. In this list, the rule of Darius III, the last Achaemenid king, is immediately preceded by a fragmentary reference to Nidin-Bel.

Simut or Šimut (Shimut) was an Elamite god. He was regarded as the herald of the gods, and was associated with the planet Mars. He was also worshiped in Mesopotamia, where he was compared with the war god Nergal.

References

  1. Matthew Wolfgang Stolper Archived 2008-06-08 at the Wayback Machine
  2. Persepolis Fortification Archive Project
  3. The project's official website
  4. "JSTOR: Search Results".
  5. Latke-Hamantash Debate
  6. LEO D-E Ergebnisse für "Stolperstein"
  7. 1 2 Abnormal Interests: Akkadian Is So Easy Archived 2008-09-08 at the Wayback Machine
  8. Matthew W. Stolper