Cuneiform Collection

Overview

With nearly 3,000 cuneiform tablets, Princeton Theological Seminary houses one of the largest collections of cuneiform in North America. The collection has been part of the Seminary’s history since the early 20^th century and is still being explored and investigated today. The oldest tablets in the collection date from ca. 2500 BCE, with most of the tablets belonging to the Ur III period (ca. 2100-2000 BCE) and the Neo-Babylonian period (ca. 626-539 BCE). Within the collection researchers will find legal documents, contracts, administrative documents, receipts, accounting documents, and more.

Due to the fragile nature of the cuneiform collection, not all tablets are available for in-person research. We have partnered with the Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (CDLI) to digitize nearly all of the collection. You can view more than 2,900 tablets from the Princeton Seminary collection through the Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (CDLI) website. In addition to multiple photographs of each tablet, the site also includes valuable metadata such as date of creation, type of document, and transcriptions of certain tablets. We invite you to explore the collection virtually prior to submitting any requests for in-person research with the cuneiform collection. If you need to see the original tablets for more advanced research, please request an appointment.