Founded in 1911, the Yale Babylonian Collection comprises over 45,000 items, including cuneiform tablets, cylinder seals, and other artifacts, as well as a complete reference library, seminar room, work space for visiting scholars, casts of major monuments, and digitization facilities. It is one of the largest collection of seals and textual material from ancient Mesopotamia in North America and ranks among the leading collections in the world. The Collection aims to preserve, publish, and make available for everyone the artifacts it houses. Through generous support from the Council of Library and Information Resources and the National Endowment of the Humanities, the entire collection is due to be digitized by the end of 2021.
Top row, left to right: Old Assyrian letter (NBC 1907); window in Collection office; Kassite kudurru (NBC 9502). Bottom row, left to right: Old Akkadian delivery of goats (NBC 6861); Babylonian duck weight (YBC 2262); Old Babylonian mask (YBC 2238).
Recent News
SPECIAL ADVISORY: Due to covid-19, the Babylonian Collection will not be accepting visitors through the Summer of 2021.
In the news:
With Lamb, Coriander, and Leeks: Decoded Babylonian Recipes (Good News Network) February 11, 2021
Yale Peabody Museum offers student summer internship (Yale Peabody Museum) January 21, 2021
The Bible’s Ancient Near Eastern Context: Interview with Eckart Frahm (Digital Hammurabi) October 10, 2020
New Online Exhibit:
A virtual exhibition developed by Wolfram for the National Museum of Mathematics, New York City, featuring virtual loans from the Yale Babylonian Collection. The exhibition explores the history of mathematics, including counting, arithmetic, algebra, geometry and mathematics education through artifacts from all over the world.
New Publications:
Edited by Agnete W. Lassen and Klaus Wagensonner
This lavishly illustrated volume gives a voice to women who lived millennia ago in Mesopotamia, present-day Iraq, Syria and Turkey, and explores their roles, representations and contributions to society.
Ancient Mesopotamia Speaks: Highlights from the Yale Babylonian Collection
Edited by Agnete W. Lassen, Eckart Frahm and Klaus Wagensonner
A stunning guide to the highlights housed in the Yale Babylonian Collection, presenting new perspectives on the society and culture of the ancient Near East. Included are a catalog of more than a hundred artifacts in the collection - some published here for the first time - with new photographs and illustrations, and essays by world-renowned experts, presenting the ancient Near East in the light of present-day discussions of lived experiences, focusing on family life and love, education and scholarship, identity, crime and transgression, demons, and healing and medicine.
Search the Collection
The Yale Babylonian Collection is catalogued in the Yale Peabody Museum's Collections Management System.
Contact Us
Yale Babylonian Collection
P.O. Box 208240
New Haven, CT 06520-8240
203-432-1837
babylonian.collection@yale.edu
