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The Urra=hubullu (𒄯𒊏 𒄷𒇧𒈝 ur₅-ra — ḫu-bul-lu₄; or HAR-ra = ḫubullu,^[1] or Gegenstandslisten ("lists of objects")^[1]) is a major Babylonian glossary or "encyclopedia".^[2] It consists of Sumerian and Akkadian lexical lists ordered by topic.^[3]^[4] The canonical version extends to 24 tablets, and contains almost 10,000 words.^[5] The conventional title is the first gloss, ur₅-ra and ḫubullu meaning "interest-bearing debt" in Sumerian and Akkadian, respectively. One bilingual version from Ugarit [RS2.(23)+] is Sumerian/Hurrian rather than Sumerian/Akkadian.

A partial table of contents:

Tablets 1-2: juridicial forms^[1] thought to be possibly part of the ana ittišu series^[6]
Tablets 3-7: names of trees, parts of trees, products of trees, and wooden objects^[1]
Tablet 4: naval vehicles
Tablet 5: terrestrial vehicles
Tablets 10-12: names of vessels, ovens, clay objects, hides, chemicals, and objects of bronze, copper, silver^[1]
Tablets 12, 14 & 15: systematic enumeration of the names of domestic animals, terrestrial animals, birds (including bats)^[7] and parts of the body
Tablet 16: stones^[1]
Tablet 17: plants.^[8]^[1]
Tablet 19: names of wool and vestments^[1]
Tablets 21-22: names of towns, countries, mountains, a and rivers^[1]
Tablets 22-23: provisions^[1]
Tablet 24: list of men^[1]

The tablets form a series that had been arranged by time of the Sumarian Dynasty of Isin, with a bilingual tradition existing by the time the Kassites.^[1] The bulk of the collection was compiled in the Old Babylonian period (early 2nd millennium BC), with pre-canonical forerunner documents extending into the later 3rd millennium.^[9]

Like other canonical glossaries, the Urra=hubullu was often used for scribal practice. Other Babylonian glossaries include:

Ea: a family of lists that give the simple signs of the cuneiform writing system with their pronunciation and Akkadian meanings. (MSL volume 14)
"Table of Measures": conversion tables for grain, weights and surface measurements. Again, it is not clear how these tablets were used.
Lú and Lú=ša, a list of professions (MSL volume 12)
Izi, a list of compound words ordered by increasing complexity
Diri "limited to compound logograms whose reading cannot be inferred from their individual components; it also includes marginal cases such as reduplications, presence or absence of determinatives, and the like." (MSL volume 14)
Nigga, Erimhuš and other school texts
Ana ittišu: a legal glossary.^[6]

Extant Tablets

Many copies of the series are known in collections such as the Louvre, British Museum and Ashmolean Museum. The original Akkadian texts were found during the Oxford-Field Museum Expedition to Kish, Iraq (1923-1933).^[10] The texts are collated and summarised by Meer (1939).^[1]

References

Benno Landsberger The Series HAR-ra="hubullu", Materials for the Sumerian lexicon (MSL), 5. 6, 7, 9, 10 and 11, Rome: Pontificium Institutum Biblicum, 1957-
A. Poebel, The Beginning of the Fourteenth Tablet of Harra Hubullu, The American Journal of Semitic Languages and Literatures, Vol. 52, No. 2 (Jan., 1936), pp. 111-114
Soldt, W. H. van, "Babylonian Lexical, Religious and Literary Texts, and Scribal Education at Ugarit and its Implications for the Alphabetic Literary Texts," in: Ugarit: ein ostmediterranes Kulturzentrum in Alten Orient: Ergebnisse und Perspektiven der Forschung, Dietrich and Loretz eds., Abhandlungen zur Literatur Alt-Syrien-Palästinas, vol 7, Münster: Ugarit-Verlag, 1995, 171-212