Sumerological Studies in Honor of Thorkild Jacobsen on His Seventieth Birthday June 7, 1974

The self-effacing editor of this volume, S. J. Lieberman, explains in his Foreword that to provide a fitting tribute to Jacobsen the usual “random collection of articles” was eschewed, and instead “we set out to solicit specific articles covering the field of Sumerology,” which, by the breadth of their approach, would give an opportunity for the Sumerologist “all too often reluctant to venture into the synthesis of his studies” to take a wider view of his subject. Through no fault of the editor, the volume fails to match the breadth of Jacobsen’s own interests, since it lacks the contributions on history, art, archaeology, and religion, but it does provide a more or less explicitly synthesizing approach on other major branches of the discipline, by eight scholars well qualified to do this: Nissen on the geography of Sumer, Tom B. Jones on the administrative archives, Edzard on the Sumerian oath, Diakonoff on writing, Civil on lexicography, and Sjöberg, Hallo, and Wilcke on different aspects of the Sumerian literary corpus. [From a review by J. N. Postgate in the Journal of Semitic Studies 26 (1981) 274–75].