Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-2lccl Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-27T02:59:53.441Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Assyrians and Arameans

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 August 2014

A. R. Millard
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Since the birth of Assyriology there has been recognized at the heart of the neo-Assyrian empire what J. N. Postgate has termed “the symbiosis of Aramaic and Assyrian writing systems”. In 1865 Sir Henry Rawlinson published several cuneiform tablets bearing notes in Aramaic on their edges. These notes were often written with a reed pen while the clay was still soft, the fibres of the point leaving their distinct marks in the clay (e.g. the two examples illustrated in Iraq 34 (1972), Plate LIVb, c). It may be that other notes were written in ink on hardened tablets, but have been erased in the course of time. Certainly ink was used for annotations on tablets in the neo-Babylonian and Persian periods, applied after the clay had dried, as it had been long before by the Egyptian clerks at El-Amarna. While the ink notes could have been added at any time after the tablets were inscribed, far from the places where the tablets were written, those applied while the clay was damp were clearly contemporary with the writing of the cuneiform, and originated in the same place. The purpose of these notes is clear: they were dockets or labels to identify the documents, such as “quittance deed of Hazael” (Iraq 34, 134–7). Their presence in the citadel at Nineveh implies there were scribes at work there who could not read cuneiform, yet who would need to distinguish one document from another. Nineveh is the only known provenance for such dockets, although there are some which have reached museums without any information about their discovery (the Hazael deed mentioned, a deed for the division of an inheritance now in Copenhagen, a corn loan in private hands, and a text in Brussels).

Type
Research Article
Information
IRAQ , Volume 45 , Issue 1 , Spring 1983 , pp. 101 - 108
Copyright
Copyright © The British Institute for the Study of Iraq 1983

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Fifty Neo-Assyrian Legal Documents (Warminster, 1976), 6, 11Google Scholar.

2 JRAS NS. 1 (1865), 187–246Google Scholar.

3 Clay, A. T., Business Documents of Murashû sons of Nippur (BE Series A, vol. X; Philadelphia, 1904), 6 f.Google Scholar; Old Testament and Semitic Studies in Memory of W. R. Harper I (Chicago, 1908), 287–321Google Scholar.

4 See Budge, E. A. Wallis, Bezold, C., The Tell-el-Amarna Tablets in the British Museum (London, 1892)Google Scholar, no. 10, Pl. 23, for the clearest example (= Knudtzon, J. A., Die el-Amarna Tafeln (Leipzig, 1915), no. 23Google Scholar).

5 Copenhagen deed, see J. N. Postgate, Fifty Neo-Assyrian Legal Documents, no. 18; corn loan, see Postgate, J. N., Iraq 35 (1973), 34, 35, no. 6CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Brussels text to be published by E. Lipiński, see Acta Anliqua 22 (1974), 373, n. 1Google Scholar.

6 Barnett, R. D., Falkner, M., The Sculptures of Tiglath-pileser III (London, 1962), PI. VIGoogle Scholar; cf. Wiseman, D. J., Iraq 17 (1955), 12 fCrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 Parrot, A., Nineveh and Babylon (London, 1961), opp. p. 279Google Scholar.

8 Iraq 34 (1972), 131, 132Google Scholar.

9 Collected by Vattioni, F., Augustinianum 10 (1970), 493 ff., nos. 23 , 24, 26, 143–8, 149–52CrossRefGoogle Scholar; see further Degen, R., Neue Ephemeris für Semitische Epigraphik 1 (1972), 49–57Google Scholar, on those from Tell Halaf; and Lipiński, E., Studies in Aramaic Inscriptions and Onomastics (Leuven, 1975), 83–142Google Scholar.

10 Postgate, J. N., Fifty Neo-Assyrian Legal Documents, 5, 6Google Scholar.

11 Semitica 23 (1973), 95–102Google Scholar; see further Lipiński, E., Acta Antiqua 22 (1974), 377–9Google Scholar; Fales, F. M., AION 36 (1976), 541–7Google Scholar; Kaufman, S. A., Ancient Near Eastern Studies … J. J. Finkelstein, ed. Ellis, M. de J. (Hamden, Connecticut, 1977), 119–27Google Scholar; Teixidor, J., Syria 56 (1979), 390–2Google Scholar.

12 Segal, J. B., Iraq 19 (1957), 139–45CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Albright, W. F., BASOR 149 (1958), 33–6Google Scholar; Bordreuil, P., RHPR 59 (1979), 313–17Google Scholar; Naveh, J., Maarav 2.2 (1979–1980), 163–71Google Scholar.

13 Layard, A. H., Nineveh and Babylon (London, 1853), 156Google Scholar; Kitchen, K. A., The Third Intermediate Period (Warminster, 1972), 144Google Scholar.

14 Wilson, J. V. Kinnier, The Nimrud Wine Lists (London, 1972), 63Google Scholar; cf. Tadmor, H., Unity and Diversity, ed. Goedicke, H. and Roberts, J. J. M. (Baltimore, 1975), 42Google Scholar.

15 See Fales, F. M., Oriens Antiquus 16 (1977), 41–68Google Scholar; Atti del I Convegno italiano sul Vicino Oriente antico (Rome, 1978), 199–227Google Scholar; Iraq 41 (1979), 55–73CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

16 Iraq 44 (1982), 88–90Google Scholar.

17 Erelz Israel 8 (1967), 5*Google Scholar; and Rivista di Studi Fenici 2 (1974), 27Google Scholar.

18 Handbuch der Keilschriftliterature I (Berlin, 1967), 83Google Scholarad Dossin, G., Iranica Antiqua 2 (1962), 162Google Scholar, nos. 26, 27.

19 Zadok, R., On West Semitic in Babylonia (Jerusalem, 1977), 109Google Scholar, gives examples.

20 Orientalia Lovanensia Periodica 12 (1981), 117–25Google Scholar; a clearer photograph is given in the exhibition catalogue Tyr à travers les âges (Paris, 1980), 42Google Scholar. The legend reads mn'blnh Itbly, but the second name is probably to be read first (“Property of Tabalay (son of) M ”).

21 Sprengling, M., AJSL 44 (1932), 53–8Google Scholar; cf. JSS 21 (1976), 8Google Scholar.

22 Assaf, A. Abou, Bordreuil, P., Millard, A. R., La Statue de Tell Fekherye (Paris, 1982)Google Scholar. In the Assyrian text, line 2, read maš-qí-te with the photograph (my single examination of the stone suggested there were more wedges). In the Aramaic, line 11, note that our text omits the word-divider wrongly placed by the engraver: wz:y:yld.

23 D. D. Luckenbill, ARAB I, § 373; Grayson, A. K., Assyrian Royal Inscriptions II (Wiesbaden, 1976), §433Google Scholar.

24 See Kitchen, K. A., The Third Intermediate Period, 393Google Scholar.

25 See Kessler, K., Untersuchungen zur historische Topographie Nordmesopotamiens (Wiesbaden, 1980), 95 ffGoogle Scholar.

26 See the table on pp. 116, 117 of the monograph (n. 22), but correct the numbering of the years 796–792 B.C. to read “Année 14” to “Année 18” in accord with pp. 183 f.

27 See the analysis by Deller, K. H., Or NS 26 (1957), 144–56, 268–72Google Scholar.

28 Nergal-ereš, see Page, S., Iraq 30 (1968), 139–53CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Tadmor, H., Iraq 35 (1973), 144–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Šamši-ilu, see Thureau-Dangin, F.et al., Til Barsib (Paris, 1936), 141–51Google Scholar; Bel-harran-beli-uṣur, see D. D. Luckenbill, ARAB I, §§ 823–7.

29 Meissner, B., AfO Beiheft 1 (1933), 75, 76Google Scholar; Albright, W. F., An. St. 6 (1956), 82Google Scholar.

30 D. D. Luckenbill, ARAB I, § 715.

31 Cf. Oded, B., Mass Deportations and Deportees in the Neo-Assyrian Empire (Wiesbaden, 1979), 105Google Scholar.

32 Iraq 14 (1952), 24–44CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Postgate, J. N., The Governor's Palace Archive (London, 1973), 238–40Google Scholar; Oppenheim, A. L., ANET3, 558–60Google Scholar.

33 Layard, A. H., Nineveh and Babylon, 600, 601Google Scholar.

34 See the study by Nylander, C., Opuscula Atheniensia 8 (1968), 119–36Google Scholar.