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Abstracts Andrew Shortland Research Laboratory for Archaeology and the History of Art, 6 Keble Road, Oxford OX1 3QJ Uncovered in the mid-nineteenth century by Sir Henry Layard and his assistants, the library of king Assurbanipal (668-627 BC) in Nineveh contained a collection of some 25,000 fragments of clay tablets, the largest accumulation of such documents known. Amongst these documents were a number related to science, mathematics, medicine and the procedures for the production of glass, perfumes and other materials. Taking the glass texts as an example, this paper places these "procedural texts" in the cultural and literary traditions of the period. It goes on to question their utility - are they originals or copies? Recipes or dictionaries? Ritual or practical? Or are they some combination of all of these, their function changing through the life-history of the text? Finally, an assessment is made as to how much, if anything, these texts can tell us about the material, methodological and ritual practices of the glassmakers themselves and their place within the bureaucratic hierarchy of the society as a whole.? | Back to Abstracts | Back to the Timetable | |