Several years ago I compiled an index (really more of a concordance) which lined up the texts common to William Hallo and K. Lawson Younger’s Context of Scripture, and James Pritchard’s classic Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament. I had intended to do some more work on it, but this simply slipped my mind until the other day when Charles Halton commented on how useful he found this index (as well as my Anchor Bible Dictionary Index, which I’m working on upgrading as well to include a comprehensive bibliography of all the titles listed in the individual articles).
So, last night and this evening I spent, as St Jerome might say, a small lamp’s oil on the project, correcting some items in the index itself, and adding two lists of the texts which are found only in the COS volumes, or only in the ANET volume.
I’ve also redone the pdf file of the index. It is completely searchable, and is better formatted for printing than the web page itself is.
One interesting thing is the number of texts that are peculiar to each work. In ANET there are 221 titles that are not found in COS. In COS there are 525 titles that are not found in ANET. Some of those titles include multiple texts in either work. For instance, COS includes only Tablet XI of Gilgamesh, while ANET includes all the various texts known at time of publication. There are numerous historical writings found in ANET which are not found in COS. So, while the number of titles peculiar to COS is larger, it’s not precisely explicative of the quality of texts peculiar to either work. Both have their strengths. But I am still much more impressed by the wealth of material selected for ANET, even if the translations are older.
If anyone finds errors or has suggestions for improvements, please let me know. I hope the index continues to be found useful.
Fantastic, thanks!