egirtu

Definition

Egirtu is the Akkadian term for a cuneiform tablet written with the text running parallel to the short sides — a vertically oblong, one-column, thin tablet shape used in the Neo-Assyrian and Babylonian periods as the canonical physical-genre carrier for letters (capital-L scholarly correspondence to the king) and many legal transactions. The egirtu shape is paired contrastively with the u'iltu shape, the oblong-with-text-parallel-to-long-side tablet used for Reports and loan documents — a formal codicological distinction supplementing the content-criterion that separates Letters from Reports in Neo-Assyrian scholarly archives.

In Tradition

Koch-Westenholz and Brown both treat egirtu as a physical-genre rather than a content-genre label. Brown adopts Parpola's clarification that egirtu "does not specifically mean letter" but rather "the form of tablet" in which letters were commonly composed. The egirtu/u'iltu shape-pair is the canonical Neo-Assyrian sorting principle for separating Letters (long-form advisory correspondence) from Reports (short omen-citation tablets) in the Nineveh archive.

In Practice

For the student of Neo-Assyrian court astrology, egirtu names the tablet-format on which the long-form scholarly Letters of the Sargonid court (Esarhaddon, Assurbanipal; c. 680-627 BCE) were preserved — the corpus edited as Parpola, *Letters from Assyrian and Babylonian Scholars* (LAS) and later as *State Archives of Assyria* vol. 10. Egirtu tablets carry the introductory blessing-formula and the extended advisory commentary that distinguish Letters from the formulaic, observation-plus-omen-quotation Reports preserved on u'iltu-shape tablets (SAA 8). Koch-Westenholz notes a regional preference: Assyrian scholars tend toward the egirtu Letter format while Babylonian scholars favour the u'iltu Report format — a stylistic distinction running through 7th-century BCE scholarly correspondence. Recognizing the egirtu/u'iltu shape contrast lets a reader place a given Sargonid tablet in its proper documentary class without depending on greeting-formula or content alone.

Historical Origin

Attested across the Neo-Assyrian Esarhaddon-Assurbanipal scholar-archive (c. 680-627 BCE) at Nineveh; egirtu tablets are edited in Parpola *LAS* I-II (1970, 1983) and *State Archives of Assyria* vol. 10 (1993); Babylonian-scholar letters in Harper *ABL* and *CT 54*. Modern critical treatments: Koch-Westenholz, *Mesopotamian Astrology* (1995), Ch. 3 p. 54; Brown, *Mesopotamian Planetary Astronomy-Astrology* (2000), Introduction I.3 p. 12 (citing Parpola 1983b p. 2 n. 5 and *CAD* E 46).

Further Reading

• Ulla Koch-Westenholz, Mesopotamian Astrology
• David Brown, Mesopotamian Planetary Astronomy-Astrology
• Simo Parpola, Letters from Assyrian and Babylonian Scholars (SAA 10)