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The Nimrud Letters, 1952—Part I

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 August 2014

H. W. F. Saggs
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Extract

In 1952 the British School of Archaeology in Iraq, in the course of its excavations at Nimrud, found, in the chamber known as ZT 4, a collection of over three hundred Assyrian clay tablets. Dr. C. J. Gadd at once recognized that the greater part of the collection consisted of letters from a royal archive, and that they were closely similar in nature to those in the British Museum collection published by Harper. The tablets as found were unbaked and heavily impregnated with salts from the soil, and in order to preserve them it was decided to bake them in a furnace made from local materials and designed for the purpose by J. H. Reid, A.R.I.B.A. At that time there existed at Nimrud no apparatus for measuring furnace temperatures (a lack which has since been rectified), so that almost inevitably a few tablets were baked rather more than the ideal demanded. Whilst these few have taken on a coarse bricklike texture, their legibility is not substantially impaired by this, whereas about a dozen tablets which, probably by being placed in the coolest part of the furnace during the shortest firing, received insufficient baking, are now, as a result of the crystallizing-out of salts, crumbling in their boxes and liable to fall to fragments at a touch. The contrast fully vindicates the employment of this emergency treatment in the field.

Type
Research Article
Information
IRAQ , Volume 17 , Issue 1 , Spring 1955 , pp. 21 - 50
Copyright
Copyright © The British Institute for the Study of Iraq 1955

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References

page 21 note 1 See Iraq, Vol. XV, Pt. 1, p. 33Google Scholar.

page 21 note 2 Harper, R. F., Assyrian and Babylonian Letters (1892–1914)Google Scholar, abbrev. H.A.B.L. These letters are edited by Waterman, L. in Royal Correspondence of the Assyrian Empire (four vols., 1930–1936), abbrev. R.C.A.E.Google Scholar

page 21 note 3 The fact that these few tablets were insufficiently baked was not, of course, known until the present writer examined them in the Spring of 1954, otherwise they would have received the laboratory care accorded to all objects coming into the Iraq Department of Antiquities in need of preservative treatment.

page 24 note 4 The writer has not aimed at complete consistency in the method of transliteration. Signs in broken passages have been represented in capitals only where there is a substantial likelihood that they are not being used with their commonest phonetic value. Ideogrammatic writings of place-names are represented by Sumerian values in capitals. Verbal forms and common nouns written ideogrammatically are transcribed as Akkadian, unless either there is substantial doubt about the Akkadian equivalent, or damage to the text would make it difficult for the reader to find from the copy which signs were being read. Determinatives are only transcribed as Sumerian in capitals when forming part of a group of which the rest is in capitals. The system of notation is that of Labat, Manuel d'épigraphie akkadienne; in addition a colon in the transliteration represents the word-divider.

The translations are on the whole rather literal. Whilst no doubt Assyrian letters were less formal in style than religious or legal documents, and almost certainly contained what we should call colloquialisms, any attempt to translate Assyrian phrases by English colloquialisms or lively idioms could be grossly misleading, in view of the fact that even between two cultures as close as those of Great Britain and France, the specific nuance of an idiom in one language may differ widely from that of its equivalent in the other.

The convention of employing italics for doubtful passages in the translations has been observed. Restorations are not indicated in the translations: some are certain, and the others are represented as doubtful in the manner indicated.

page 44 note 1 See C.A.H. III, 33, 34Google Scholar.

page 44 note 2 II R., 67, line 23.

page 44 note 3 C.T. XXXIV, Pl. 47, col. 1, lines 19–24.

page 45 note 1 For an interesting example of this, see ND. 2715, to be published subsequently.

page 46 note 1 Reference is made to a town Kar-Šamaš in three of the Harper Letters, but in only one instance (H.A.B.L. 95) is the context of any assistance in determining the site of the town. On that passage Waterman (R.C.A.E., III, 47Google Scholar) comments: “Kar-Shamash: The close juxtaposition with Arrapḫa is a slight clue as to the location.” The passage does not however require Kar-Šamaš to have been near Arrapḫa, since it may be restored and translated in this sense: “As to the matter about which the king my lord has sent me a message, ‘A rab-SAG official shall go to Kar-Šamaš’, why should he go to Kar-Šamaš? It is under the jurisdiction of the governor of Arrapḫa”.

page 46 note 2 See reference on page 40 above.

page 46 note 3 H.A.B.L., 754, lines 11–13, shows that this official took military action in Babylonia at the time of the rebellion of Šamaš-šum-ukin. See also H.A.B.L. 1106, lines 11–13, and rev. 8f., where the same bel piḫati is referred to in connection with Erech; and also H.A.B.L., 998, which relates to affairs in Babylonia, but refers the king for information (see lines rev. 5 f.) to Apia, who was bel piḫali of Arrapḫa.

page 46 note 4 It would thus be as a frontier town between two provinces that it came into dispute in H.A.B.L. 95.

page 47 note 1 2 Kings, xviii, 17 ff.

page 47 note 2 The name of the town is spelt (al)ḫi-in-da-na, but Ḫndani on the Middle Euphrates, mentioned by Tiglath-Pileser I and later kings, is not likely to have been referred to in this context. (at)ḫi-in-da-i-na is mentioned as a town of Bit-Amukkani in Sidney Smith, First Campaign of Sennacherib, line 44.

page 48 note 1 See lines 13′ and 15′.

page 48 note 2 See line 19′ and note (p. 34).

page 48 note 3 II R, 67, line 26.

page 48 note 4 C.A.H., III, 47Google Scholar.

page 49 note 1 Sidney Smith, First Campaign of Sennacherib, lines 14, 56.

page 49 note 2 See above, p. 45.

page 49 note 3 In Luckenbill, , Annals of Sennacherib, pp. 29–30Google Scholar, col. II, lines 33 to 60, the Medes, who had engaged in no hostile action, ate said to have paid mandattu, whilst the kinglets of Syria, against whom the third campaign was undertaken, paid tamartu.

page 49 note 4 See Face A, line 12′.

page 49 note 5 See lines 12′ and 18′ of Face B, and note (p. 37).