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Numerous legal and administrative texts have been discovered at numerous sites across the Assyrian Empire. These include the principal Assyrian cities Nineveh (Kuyunjik), Assur (Qalat Sherqat) and Kalhu (Nimrud; biblical Calah), as well as smaller provincial centers such as Burmarina (Tell Shiukh Fawqani), Dur-Katlimmu (Tell Sheikh Hamad), Dur-Šarrukin (Khorsabad), Guzana (Tell Halaf), Huzirina (Sultantepe), Imgur-Enlil (Balawat), Kunalia (Tell Tayinat), Ma'allanate (unidentified), Marqasu (Kahramanmaraş), Sam'al (Zinçirli), Šibaniba (Tell Billa), Til-Barsip (Tell Ahmar), and Tušhan (Ziyaret Tepe). The aim of the Archival Texts of the Assyrian Empire (ATAE) Project is to expand the Nineveh-focused State Archives of Assyria online (SAAo) [/saao/index.html] corpus by creating a complete, open-access corpus of Neo-Assyrian archival texts. Unlike SAAo, the linguistical-annotated texts in the ATAE corpus are arranged by their provenance and the archive in which they were unearthed. The archive designations used by ATAE follow Olof Pedersén, Archives and Libraries in the Ancient Near East 1500-300 B.C., Bethesda 1987, a PDF of which can be downloaded here [http://uu.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:88568/FULLTEXT01.pdf].

Neo-Assyrian archival texts provide important insights into the economic and legal history of the Assyrian Empire, while also presenting modern scholars with vital impressions of societal structures and private lives of the period. The aim of the project is to make this text corpus easily accessible to scholars, students, and the general public.

ATAE is a key component of the Archival Texts of the Middle East in Antiquity (ATMEA) sub-project of the LMU-Munich-based Munich Open-access Cuneiform Corpus Initiative [https://www.en.ag.geschichte.uni-muenchen.de/research/mocci/index.html] (MOCCI; directed by Karen Radner and Jamie Novotny). Funding for the ATAE corpus project has been provided by LMU Munich and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation (through the establishment of the Alexander von Humboldt Chair for Ancient History of the Near and Middle East). In addition, SFB 1369 "Vigilanzkulturen: Transformationen – Räume – Techniken" [https://www.sfb1369.uni-muenchen.de/] supports ATAE as part of the work programme of sub-project B01 [https://www.sfb1369.uni-muenchen.de/forschung/teilprojekte/projektbereich_b/teilprojekt_b01/index.html] ("If you hear any improper, unsuitable or unseemly word concerning the exercise of kingship": Public responses to the royal call for vigilance in the Assyrian Empire).

For further details, see the "About the project" page.

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Satellite image of the ruins of Assur and the citadel of Kalhu overlaid with general plans of the archives and libraries (Pedersén, Archives and Libraries in the Ancient Near East 1500-300 B.C. p. 133 Plan 62 and p. 148 Plan 68). Image prepared by Jamie Novotny.