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Three Middle Assyrian Tablets in the British Museum

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 August 2014

A. R. George
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Extract

Tablets of the Middle Assyrian period are rare in the collections of the British Museum, principally because the German excavations at Aššur, from which most come, were plainly more carefully controlled than many early excavations. Thus it is a pleasure to place this article, which presents three Middle Assyrian tablets, in a volume celebrating Lady Mallowan and Prof. D. J. Wiseman, to both of whom Assyriology is grateful for the edition of many documents from a younger Assyrian capital, Nimrud. The three pieces published here are a fragment of edicts, a document listing personnel, and a collection of omens.

Type
Research Article
Information
IRAQ , Volume 50 , 1988 , pp. 25 - 37
Copyright
Copyright © The British Institute for the Study of Iraq 1988

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References

* Copies of K 205, 48–11–4, 280 and BM 30211 are published by permission of the Trustees. Thanks are due to Dr. J. E. Reade for assistance in some matters of provenance and prior publication, and to Prof. K. Deller especially, for his many invaluable notes on a preliminary draft. Accountability for errors that remain is mine alone.

1 E.g. Rm 376, a tablet of incantations (Lambert, W. G., AS 16, p. 283 ffGoogle Scholar.), whose provenance is indicated in the register as the Kitmuri Temple area of Nimrud, as noted by Reade in Veenhof, K. R. (ed.), Cuneiform Archives and Libraries (Istanbul, 1986), p. 218Google Scholar.

2 Pedersén, O., Archives and Libraries in the City of Aššur, Part 1 (Uppsala, 1985), p. 31 ff.Google Scholar, M 2, and cf. the writer's review in JRAS 1987, p. 99 ffGoogle Scholar. Note that MA tablets from Aššur have also been excavated at Nineveh, as listed by Pedersen, op. cit., p. 41 f.; among them is K 205, below.

3 As already noted, after Bezold's citation, by Saporetti, C., Gli eponimi medio-assiri = BiMes 9, p. 83Google Scholar.

4 Though as noted by Weidner, , AfO 17, p. 266Google Scholar, the two bodies of texts have many such points in common. Close links are of course expected between texts which promulgate law and those that codify it.

5 See Saporetti, op. cit., p. 125, to whose references add Deller, K.—Tsukimoto, A., Bagh. Mitt. 16, p. 317, 30Google Scholar.

6 See the article of Miglus, P. A., ZA 72, p. 266 ffGoogle Scholar.

7 In MA royal inscriptions and rituals the following gates are attested in and around the temple of Aššur:

bāb aš-šur and bāh sà-mu-uḫ: KAR 154 = Menzel, Tempel II 2, obv. 9 (the former is elsewhere treated as a city gate)

bāb ῝a-zu-e: Müller, , MVAG 41/3, p. 8, 29.30Google Scholar

bāb ῝é-a-šarri and bāb didiqlat (DALLA.LÁ): KAH II 35, 25–6Google Scholar: Adad-nšršrī I (the latter is a city gate) bāb (el-lu-ti ša) dkal-kal: KAH I 14, obv. 22Google Scholar; 15, obv. 21: Shalmaneser I

ba-ab né-eš-ili-ma-ti and ba-ab ddayyānī(di.ku5)meš: IV R 2 39, obv. 36-rev. 1: Adad-nārārī I Also known is the gate of the temple of Anu and Adad:

bāb animuim ù dadad: KAH I 6, 4Google Scholar: Adad-nārārī I.

8 This wedge might also belong to end 1. 9.

9 It is unclear on the tablet whether the gate name belongs to this or the previous line. As presented here the gate name would have much the same function as the patronym in 1. 14, qualifying the preceding as a particular individual.

10 P. 210, no. 81, copy by Köcher pl. 12. That the two pieces belong together was first noted by King, , Cat. Supp., p. 265̍Google Scholar, and anyone who has compared them can be in no doubt that they are parts of a single tablet.

11 For the other three texts see Weidner, , AfO 16, pp. 202 and 210, nos. 77, 78 and 80Google Scholar; the last, Assur 4530 = A 8, has since been published in photograph by Tschinkowitz, H., AfO 22, p. 59 ffGoogle Scholar.

12 JNES 42, p. 109 ffGoogle Scholar. The present copy (fig. 3) was made some years ago in ignorance of Starr's interest in the tablet, and it is published here as a complement to his edition.