Cuneiform collection

This is by far the most significant university collection of ancient oriental antiquities in Germany. It consists mainly of cuneiform texts and covers almost all epochs and text types from a period of about 2,500 years. The collection originates mostly from the ancient city of Nippur in present-day Iraq. Nippur not only used to be the centre of worship of the Sumerian supreme god Enlil, it was also a place that cultivated the craft of writing. Among the most precious pieces are numerous literary and lexical texts written in Sumerian and Akkadian. The collection’s best-known object is a map of Nippur (HS 197) dating back to the middle of the 2nd millennium BC - the oldest existing city plan to date. 

Until 1925, the objects belonged to the collection of Hermann Hilprecht, a German-American scholar. In remembrance of his first wife, who died in 1902 in Jena, the collection was named “Frau Professor Hilprecht Collection of Babylonian Antiquities”. During the years 1932/33, the collection saw an important increase when several objects from Hilprecht’s sister were added, including parts of Hilprecht’s literary estate, ancient oriental cylinder seal impressions, and 87 Islamic faience tiles.

Today, the Hilprecht Collection features 3,300 objects—modern cyclinder seal impressions and replicas not included—of which 3,000 are cuneiform texts. It is the second-largest collection of its kind in Germany after the Museum of the Ancient Near East in Berlin.