Introduction This volume provides a selection of letters from ancient Western Asia up to the time of the First Dynasty of Isin in Mesopotamia. These letters were written on clay tablets with cuneiform characters; they are the earliest epistolary writings known to us from any part of the globe. The texts are translated from three languages—Sumerian, Eblaite, and Old Akkadian—all of which are imperfectly understood at present. Specialists in these languages will undoubtedly question many of the renditions