This volume is the first in a planned edition of the complete corpus of ancient Mesopotamian god lists. It contains the lists 'An = Anum' (including its forerunners) and 'An = Anu ?a am?li' along with several similar, more-or-less fragmentary lists. The god list An = Anum was, with its ca. 2000 entries, the most comprehensive list of its kind. It is systematically organized and contains explanations both of individual deities and of certain groups of deities. The textual witnesses also provide, to a varying degree, pronunciation and translation glosses. In this edition each list is presented as a composite reconstructed text with translation, critical apparatus, and synoptic table of the textual witnesses, followed in each case by a philological commentary. In addition, the textual witnesses are transliterated individually. Names, words, and glosses are made accessible through detailed indexes. Hand copies and photographs of previously unpublished sources conclude the volume.

(1926-2011): 1955?59 Lecturer, University of Toronto; 1959?64 Associate Professor and Chair of Oriental Seminary, Johns Hopkins University; 1964 Lecturer, then 1970?93 Professor of Assyriology, University of Birmingham; 1971 Fellow of the British Academy. He devoted his life to the decipherment and study of cuneiform tablets, chiefly in the British Museum, and is noted for his masterly reconstruction of a large number of Babylonian literary texts, beginning with Babylonian Wisdom Literature (1960) and concluding with Babylonian Creation Myths (2013).