Sumerian literary texts in the Schøyen Collection, Oslo and London

The Schøyen Collection is one of the most extensive private collection of manuscripts (World Heritage Manuscripts) in the world. It comprises around 20,000 manuscripts from 134 countries, written in more than 120 languages (https://www.schoyencollection.com/ - https://www.schoyencollection.com/about-schoyen-collection). The focus of the collection lies in the field of biblical studies, Buddhist studies - a reason the Dalai Lama also frequented this collection - as well as literature in all of its original forms, book printing, especially pre-Gutenberg book printing, music, and objects of many other subjects. Cuneiform script is also represented in the collection. It is written on numerous objects covering three millennia of cuneiform writing history. Content-wise, there is almost no literary genre that is not documented here. Texts range from late 4th millennium economic documents to historical texts from the last heyday of Mesopotamian history.

Numerous volumes of the Manuscripts in the Schøyen Collection Series have already been published, from Buddhist to Coptic manuscripts, Greek papyri, the Codex Sinaiticus Zosimi rescriptus, the Liesborn Gospels, Qumran texts, Aramaic magic bowls, etc. So far 14 volumes, some of them very extensive, are dedicated to cuneiform texts in the collection. These include lexical, mathematical, Babylonian literary, divinatory, and historical texts, incantations, economic and legal documents, letters, model contracts, and student exercises. They have all appeared in Manuscripts in the Schøyen Collection Cuneiform Tablets volumes I-XIV as part of the Cornell University Studies in Assyriology and Sumerology (CUSAS) series.

The starting point of this project are some 200 tablets containing literature written in Sumerian. After a volume of proverbs edited by Bendt Alster had already appeared in 2007, Konrad Volk was given the task of editing the bulk of the literary texts. He also serves as the editor of the series "Sumerian Literary Texts in the Schøyen Collection". Nevertheless, this project rests on several shoulders. In 2019, Christopher Metcalf's work “Literary Sources on Old Babylonian Religion” (CUSAS 38) was published as the first volume in the sub-series Sumerian Literary Texts in the Schøyen Collection. Another volume with praise hymns for rulers is about to be completed by Luděk Vacín.
A third volume with over 100 plates and 110 different texts will be ready to go to print at the end of 2022. The autograph drawings of this volume of literary texts were made primarily by J. Matuszak, with K. Volk providing the conceptual framework, transliterations, and commentary. Several autograph copies were provided by other specialist colleagues.
A fourth volume, which should conclude the edition of all relevant texts, is at an advanced stage of planning.