Cuneiform tablet: private letter

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Small enough to be portable and durable when dried, clay tablets allowed for the transmission of information across time and space. Although different scripts and languages could be impressed into the clay using a reed stylus, this method of writing was most often used to create texts in the cuneiform script and Akkadian language. In this letter, a man named Marduk-mushallim writes to his superior to give a report on the implementation of order from a king – probably Ammisaduqa, a king of Babylon. Written several decades before the collapse of the Babylonian state, this unusual letter hints at the unrest that prefigured, and may have contributed to, the state’s eventual downfall. In this letter, and a few others like it, trouble comes from the countryside, rather than within particular cities. According to Marduk-mushallim, the king wants to increase security around the city of Sippar-Yahrurum (to the north of Babylon), in part to protect livestock from hostile troops. Marduk-mushallim warns that the king’s orders are not being implemented – particularly the closing of the city gate during the night hours.

Ancient Near Eastern Art

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Met's Department of Ancient Near Eastern Art cares for approximately 7,000 works ranging in date from the eighth millennium B.C. through the centuries just beyond the emergence of Islam in the seventh century A.D. Objects in the collection were created by people in the area that today comprises Iraq, Iran, Turkey, Syria, the Eastern Mediterranean coast, Yemen, and Central Asia. From the art of some of the world's first cities to that of great empires, the department's holdings illustrate the beauty and craftsmanship as well as the profound interconnections, cultural and religious diversity, and lasting legacies that characterize the ancient art of this vast region.

Metropolitan Museum of Art