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Assyrian Texts and Fragments

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 August 2014

J. N. Postgate
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Extract

The John Rylands Library, Manchester (No. P 28, Box 22).

Dimensions: 5·5 × 6·4 × 2·3 cm.

Copy and photographs: Plates XIII, XIVa, b (the copy is traced off the photographs and corrected after collation).

Type
Research Article
Information
IRAQ , Volume 35 , Issue 1 , Spring 1973 , pp. 13 - 36
Copyright
Copyright © The British Institute for the Study of Iraq 1973

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References

1 For permission to study and publish this text, and nos. 3 and 7 below, and for supplying the photograph of no. 7, I am indebted to Dr. F. Taylor, Librarian of the John Rylands Library, and I am most grateful to him for his assistance. My thanks also go to Mr. John Prag, of the City Museum, for his help while I was in Manchester, and to D. A. Kennedy, who most generously told me of the existence of these texts, and suggested that I should work on them.

2 See note I, above p. 13.

3 I am grateful to the Keeper of the Department of W. Asiatic Antiquities and its staff, in particular to Mr. C. B. F. Walker, for their assistance, and to the Trustees of the British Museum for permission to publish the photographs.

4 My thanks are due to Professor W. G. Lambert for bringing this fragment to my notice; it is referred to in W. G. Lambert and A. R. Millard, Catalogue of the cuneiform tablets …, Second Supplement, ix, note 2. The number “A 561” is written in pencil on the edge; Mr. C. B. F. Walker tells me that the significance of this mark is not known, and that the Museum records give no special indications as to the tablet's provenance.

5 Viz. KAV 1 has šum-[ma] MÍ lu-ú DAM-at LÚ lu-ú … (K 10135, 5) ; mi-qí-it (l. 6); -áš- (l. 7); and lu-ú (l. 9).

6 Viz. KAV 1 inserts MÍ and omits ù (l. 1), and writes [mi]-im- for mìm- and lu-ú, -ru-ú-[ši], and ša-a.

7 The apparent instance širgu in Tablet A, § 5, 62, is illusory ; the form ši-ir-qí is a fem. imperative from Sarāqu (cf. CAD A, Part 1, 181b).

8 First publication by Saggs, H. W. F., Iraq 20 (1958), 182–187CrossRefGoogle Scholar, with copy, Pl. XXXVII. The tablet is now in the Iraq Museum (IM 64156), and I am grateful to the Director of the Iraq Museum, Dr. Fawzy Rashid, for permission to work on it. I am happy also to be able to acknowledge the assistance of Dr. Simo Parpola, with whom I was able to discuss the text in detail, and of J. D. Hawkins, who has contributed valuable comment on the Anatolian side.

The published copy, being accurate in all but the most damaged passages, obviates the necessity of a new copy. The collations and interpretations here offered have been made possible by our more recent understanding of Neo-Assyrian.

9 Using the instances recorded in CAD and AHw, it seems that basi has three main constructions : (1) followed by the present, e.g. UN.MEŠ-Šnu lusaḫḫiru liddinūni-šunu ba-si LÚ.ERÍN.MEŠ ikabbusu dullu eppušu “let them give their families back to them, so that the men will continue working” (ABL 537 rev. 5–9; cf. ABL 414 rev. 5; 1205 rev. 6; no rev. 12); (2) with the precative, e.g. šarru beli lišpura ba-si lu etkāka “let the king write to me so that I can be alerted and …” (ABL 373 rev. 9 ; cf. 476 rev. 10; 15 rev. 5; 453 rev. 11; 467 rev. 10; 608, 9; 49, 10); and (3) as a preposition with following genitive, e.g. tasala'anni (mā) ba-si ta-da-ni ana LÚ.ÌR.MEŠ-ka “you are lying to me so as to give (the houses) to your servants” (ABL 190, 7; cf. ABL 311, 13 (ba-si ḫa-ni-e “for this purpose”), ABL 19, 9 (ba-si mi-i-ni “to what purpose?”), and possibly Ebeling, E., Tod und Leben 15Google Scholar (= Afo 16 (1952–1953), 311Google Scholar), iii. 19, ba-si ina a-la-ki).

10 Saggs, H. W. F., Iraq 20 (1958), 202–208CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11 For this reason I have not assigned dates to events in the reign of Tiglath-pileser III, the attribution to his reign being sufficient for our immediate purposes.

12 APN, 45b; this reading is confirmed by S. Parpola, who has copied K 1008, and this disposes of E. O. Forrer's suggestion (Provinzeinteilung, 83) that we should read Marduk-šarru-uṣur.

Our Aššur-šarru-uṣur is almost certainly the man referred to in ADD 928, which dates to the reign of Sargon, and where he appears in a list after the king's son (Sennacherib), the sukkallu, and the two turtānus (i.6, also in ii.6, 9, and iii.2′; also ND 2451, 15; these texts will be re-edited after collation in my forthcoming study of neo-Assyrian taxation).

13 The sign MUŠ is not assigned the value mus (von Soden, W., An Or 42, p. 41Google Scholar), but in most Assyrian texts where this first syllable is written with two signs, they are mu-us- and not mu-uš-; the latter is found in Babylonian texts, and occasionally in Assyrian inscriptions (but not as often as indicated in Parpola, S., AOAT 6, 253Google Scholar). This seems to reflect the regular treatment of foreign sibilants in the two languages.

14 Lie, A. G., Sargon, 66, 1. 445Google Scholar.

15 Midas is occasionally described as a dynastic name for the kings of Phrygia; I have not encountered any compelling reason for this assumption.

16 Cf. below, p. 31 (on Hilakku).

17 That the Annals may mention under one palû events which in fact took place later, although they belong thematically to the context, is not hard to understand. An example may be found in Lie, A. G., Sargon, 64, 11. 15–16Google Scholar, where at the end of Sargon's campaign on the Elamite border in 709 B.c., he mentions that he settled there people from Kummuh. The eponym lists date the campaign against Kummuh to the next year (708 B.C.), so that here the Annals anticipate in order to describe the re-settlement of the area together with its conquest (cf. Tadmor, H., JCS 12 (1958), 96Google Scholar; I see no reason to associate Lie, A. G., Sargon, 70-72, 11. 467–12Google Scholar with the 13th rather than the 14th palû).

18 The identity Atuna/Tuna, long assumed, is now confirmed by the appearance of 1Ušhitti kura-tú-na-a-[a] in place of the usual kurtu-na-a-a, on a recently discovered stele of Tiglath-pileser III. See L. D. Levine, Two Neo-Assyrian Stelae from Iran (Royal Ontario Museum, Art and Archaeology Occasional Paper 23 (R.O.M., 1972), 18,1. 11).

19 In the letter ABL 197 Sennacherib, writing to his father, mentions a message from Tabal, from Nabû-le'i, the major domo (rab bēti) of Ahat-abiša ; the rab bēti, despite his title, usually acted as military deputy to a provincial governor, and he was, for example, Naqi'a/Zakūtu's immediate subordinate in Lahiru. The letter mentions the defeat of Urarṭu by the Cimmerians, and surely belongs after 713 B.C., if not after 709. It is clear that Bīt-burutaš continued to have Ahat-abiša as its nominal ruler, even if the administration was effectively carried on by her rab bēti.

20 See for all that follows Tadmor, H., JCS 12 (1958), 94–97Google Scholar.

21 Labdudu is found in Winckler, H., Sargon I, 98Google Scholar, 1. 18, and 152, 1. 72 (= II, Pl. 30, no. 64, 1. 18; Pl. 39,1. 72). These are Display Inscriptions, and the events are not dated, but Labdudu is mentioned together with other tribes or areas which were subdued in 710 and not before. From what is known of that and other campaigns in the area, it is clear that 710 B.C. is the year in which Labdudu also was conquered.

22 There is no sound reason to favour a date in the reign of Tiglath-pileser III, as advocated by von Soden, W. (in OLZ 56 (1961), 577)Google Scholar. Not only would this postulate previously unattested confrontation between the Assyrians and the Phrygians, but the size and ductus of the script strongly resemble other letters from Sargon's reign, which are much smaller and more compact than the letters from Tiglath-pileser's reign which I have had the opportunity to examine.

23 Note that this must mean that the letter was dictated in Babylonia; perhaps our (unfinished) version was brought back to Kalhu later. Sargon was in Babylonia during 710 and 709; he was in Kalhu in 708 (cf. Lie, A. G., Sargon, 72, 1. 9)Google Scholar.

24 The owner is Professor Dr. Peter Franke, of the Institut für Alte Geschichte, Universität des Saarlandes, Saarbrücken. I am most grateful to him for permission to publish the text here.

25 Cf. Millard, A. R., Iraq 34 (1972), 131 ffCrossRefGoogle Scholar.

26 I hope at a later date to present reasons for supposing this to have been an Aramaic document of perishable material.

27 If qaítu “bow” occurs in neo-Assyrian, it would presumably take the form *qassu ; on the other hand, the Aramaic qšt (also “bow”) would not be subject to the same phonetic change. It is conceivable that the village was known indifferently by the Assyrian or Aramaic words for “bow”, but we have enough examples of Aramaic words rendered with logograms to make this hypothesis unnecessary.

28 See note 1, above p. 13.

28 The sign is not 15 - ištar (checked), although this may have been what the scribe intended.

30 For cuneiform Urarfian tablets, see Diakonoff, I. M., Urartskie pis'ma i dokumenty (Moscow/Leningrad, 1963)Google Scholar.