A Glimpse into the History of Research: Figulla’s “Book C”, W. E. D. Allen, and the Remarkable Journey of a Hellenistic Tablet

The article provides a glimpse into the journey of a cuneiform tablet that, originally written in the southern Mesopotamian city of Uruk during the Seleucid era, traveled from its place of origin to London—where it was transliterated by a keeper in the British Museum but never accessioned into the museum's collection—and ultimately to its current location in the United States, where it forms part of the Yale Babylonian Collection. The article offers not only an updated edition of the piece, its discussion and archival contextualization, but also an opportunity to reflect on significant aspects of the history of research in Assyriology. On the one hand, this rediscovery underscores the invaluable contributions of scholars like Figulla, who engaged in the preliminary cataloguing and analysis of the British Museum’s collections—work that continues to form the foundation of our research today. It also highlights advancements in studying texts from the latest phases of the cuneiform tradition, shedding light on the methodological processes through which texts that might otherwise be lost to research can be reconstructed, identified, and given meaning.