Numbers and Quantities in Editions of Economic and Administrative Cuneiform Texts From the Beginning of the Second Millennium BCE: The Case of the Capacity System

Numbers and quantities are omnipresent in cuneiform texts, and have been transliterated and translated by Assyriologists since the nineteenth century in many diverse ways. This study focuses on editions of administrative texts dated to the first half of the second millennium BCE, and on the measuring system for capacity, whose interpretation by modern editors has resulted in a multitude of different transliterations and translations. It shows how transliteration and translation conventions have an impact on the understanding of ancient numerical and metrological systems, and suggests that editions of cuneiform texts should reflect, as far as possible, the original ways of expressing numbers and quantities.