The List of Nineveh Joins provides information on every join of a cuneiform tablet, clay prism or clay cylinder from Nineveh (Kouyunjik) that has officially been recorded at the British Museum's Ancient Near East Department. In general, joins made of boss' fragments are omitted in this list. This list of joins aims to fill a gap: The last complete list of Nineveh joins was published in 1960 by the British Museum (A List of Fragments Rejoined in the Kuyunjik Collection of The British Museum). Later, R. Borger up-dated this lists four times in 1975, 1977, 1982, and 1984 (see the bibliography to this list of joins). Information about joins made after 1984 can only be traced back with help of various publications - or by asking the staff of the British Museum's Ancient Near East Department. Because new joins were and are made almost every week in different numbers, a printed version of another List of Joins would be out-of-date soon. Nowadays, the only practical way of giving information on new joins is a web-based list that can be updated on a regular basis. The List of Nineveh Joins wants to give a forum for this kind of information.
While the catalogues published by The British Museum never mention the name of the scholar who identified a particular join or the date a join was made, one can trace back R. Borger's joins in his published join lists. The Museum's card files and join books, on the other hand, contain those information. The List of Nineveh Joins includes all relevant data from any British Museum's ANE Department's source I was able to get hold of. Unfortunately, none of these sources is complete, but the published catalogues and lists as well as the publications of various scholars give additional information.
The biggest part of the work was done during the period of three months (October - December 2005) I spent at the British Museum to carry out the second part of the British Museum's Ashurbanipal Library Project. Whenever I was not researching the cuneiform tablets, I went through the Ancient Near East Department's file cards, the Museum's database, the join books, and various lists to collect the needed data. In January / February 2006 I checked all published catalogues of the British Museum's Kouyunjik collection and the join lists published by R. Borger (see the Bibliography and Description of the List of Joins). Even after having used all these sources to build up a database there are still some data missing. Instead of searching for these missing data in various monographs and journals, which would have taken some additional months, I decided to publish this list in its preliminary state.
Because of the preliminary state of the List of Nineveh Joins I would like to ask everybody to email corrections or additional information to me.
Acknowledgements:
The Trustees of the British Museum generously permitted the publication this List of Nineveh Joins. My sincere thanks go to the Townley Group of the Friends of the British Museum for funding my research at the British Museum. I am very much indebted to Christopher Walker, recently retired curator of the Ancient Near Eastern Department for the cuneiform tablet collection, who introduced me into the ANE Department's records and informed me about every new source he discovered. Without his help, this List of Joins could have never been compiled! Special thanks go to Irving Finkel, curator of the Department's cuneiform collection, and to John Curtis, director of the ANE Department, for their help and encouragement. Last, but not least, I would like to thank the Museum Assistants of the ANE Department and the conservators for the cuneiform tablets of the British Museum's Conservation Departments for their generous support on various occasions.
Corrections and additional data to the List of Nineveh Joins were sent by: Richard Beal, Uri Gabbay, Theodora Georgiou, Nils P. Heeßel, Enrique Jiménez, and Tuviah Kwasman.