This volume initiates the publication of the cuneiform collection of the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts. Despite the rather small range of tablets (about 1760), it gives a comprehensive representation of chronological periods of the ancient Near East, from the pre-Sargonic (the middle of the 3rd millennium B.C.) to the Neo-Babylonian and Persian (6th – 5th centuries A.D.). The core of the museum collection are 1320 cuneiform tablets from the holdings of Russian historian and collector...