Letters to the King of Mari: A New Translation, with Historical Introduction, Notes, and Commentary

In this new Mesopotamian Civilizations volume, Professor Heimpel collects the corpus of the Mari correspondence and provides an introduction, a reconstruction of events during Zimri-Lim's reign, and English translations of these Mari texts (26/1, 26/2, 27, and additional texts). This volume includes indexes of personal names/individuals, group designations/personnel, and places.
The letters from ancient Mari have provided a remarkable link to the history and culture of that petty kingdom in northwestern Mesopotamia. This is literature of the elite levels of society, of course, but it deals with issues that affect many levels of the population (tribal peoples, town and village officials, religious functionaries, taxpayers, and military conscripts). Most of the translations of the extensive correspondence between the kings of Mari and their administrative appointees and officials have been published in French. Heimpel, therefore, fills a need for an English translation of the correspondence from ARM 26/1, 26/2, and 27. He carefully explains the basic difficulties of creating both a literal and an understandable rendering of the texts (pp. 167-72), including the mental processes for deciding how to translate terms with similar meaning in various contexts. H. insists that it is most important "to provide a measure of accountability in translating" in order to prevent one's own "subjective style from coloring the translation." Although this approach brings an important measure of discipline to the task, it has resulted in a set of translations that will cause modern readers to stumble occasionally over attempts to preserve an archaic, idiomatic, bureaucratic style of writing.