ABSTRACT
In the second millennium B.C.E., royal collecting activities expanded beyond the realm of exotica. The kings of several political entities in Mesopotamia began to collect objects from the past as well as from distant lands. A new internationalism permeated royal affairs and the world of Mesopotamia was opened to newcomers and travelers. Mesopotamian collecting in the second millennium is above all characterized by a diversity of activities reflecting the nature of the societies that came to prominence and communicated with each other. The second millennium was also a time of tremendous archival activity, as cuneiform was adopted by several cultures in and around Mesopotamia, and the medium of the clay tablet developed as a politically expedient source of bureaucratic investigation and verification. For the first time, writing itself, in the form of tablets and inscriptions on stone monuments, enters the realm of collections, preserved over centuries for the sake of constructing royal identity.
