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The Sultantepe Tablets (continued)VIII. Shalmaneser In Ararat

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 December 2013

W. G. Lambert
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Extract

Among the Sultantepe tablets one attracts attention by its unexpectedness. It is, to quote O. R. Gurney's description,

an account of the campaign of Shalmaneser III against Urartu [the Biblical Ararat], preceded by a speech in which reference is made to previous campaigns against Bit-Adini, Til-Barsip and the Kings of the Hittites.

The Sultantepe Tablets, I, p. 4, on No. 43.

Accounts of the campaigns undertaken by Assyrian kings did not ordinarily circulate along with epics, hymns, incantations and the other categories of texts which went to make up a library in an Assyrian town. Such historical accounts were incorporated in inscriptions composed to glorify the king concerned, and however busy scribes may have been multiplying copies during the reign of a particular king, the coming to power of his successor resulted in an immediate and total neglect of these inscriptions.

Type
Research Article
Information
Anatolian Studies , Volume 11 , December 1961 , pp. 143 - 158
Copyright
Copyright © The British Institute at Ankara 1961

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References

1 Winckler, , Sammlung, II, 2 ff.Google Scholar; ABRT. I, 54 ff.Google Scholar; BA. V, 628 ffGoogle Scholar.

2 See Bauer, Th., ZA. 40, 250Google Scholar; the Esarhaddon text is republished by Borger, R., Asarhaddon, pp. 102 ffGoogle Scholar. That of Shamshi-Adad V is given by Weidner, in AfO. IX, 101 ffGoogle Scholar.

3 Unfortunately only a completely illegible photograph of the last portion of the inscription is given.

4 A new edition of the inscriptions is given by Ernst Michel in WdO. See II, 408 ff.

5 i.e. the period between the death of the preceding monarch and the following New Year.

6 No account of Aššur-nāṣir-pal's work in Urarṭu is preserved. The surviving edition of the annals (Budge, and King, , AKA. pp. 254 ff.Google Scholar). which gives detailed reports on the first six years, followed by further undated episodes, does not even contain the name. The country is mentioned, however, in non-annalistic contexts as one extremity of this king's conquests (AKA. 194, 15, and 216, 9). In the latter of these cases, the “Standard Inscription”, only certain copies have the mention of Urarṭu. The facts agree with the interpretation that Aššur-nāṣir-pal's attack, or attacks on Urarṭu took place toward the end of his reign, which fits our conclusion about the poetic account of Shalmaneser, that it describes a campaign at the beginning of his reign conceived as a continuation of the work of his father.

7 The new name given by Shalmaneser to Til Barsip.

8 Ancient Records, §602. [Our own recent autopsy has found only the aligned heads of two horizontal wedges, which may be remnants of the sign GU4 “Iyyar”, but could hardly be all that survives of a once complete ŠU, as copied in III R.]

9 See Gelb, I. J., Hurrians and Subarians, p. 47Google Scholar, and the references there quoted.

10 The German literature on the various places is quoted by Michel, in WdO. I, 461Google Scholar. In Russian see Melikishvili, G. A., VDI. 1950, no. 2, pp. 26–42Google Scholar; Idem, Nairi-Urartu (Tbilisi, 1954); Diakonoff, I. M., VDI. 1956, no. 2, p. 60Google Scholar; Piotrovsky, B. B., Vanskoye Tsarstvo (Moscow, 1959), pp. 52 ff.Google Scholar; the results of a survey of sites around Lake Van is given by Burney, C. A. in Anatolian Studies, VII, 37 ffGoogle Scholar.

11 Most recently by Piotrovsky, loc. cit.

12 A different view is advanced by Peñuela, J. M. in Sefarad, VI, 331 ff.Google Scholar, where it is located near the north-west corner of Lake Urmia, but even this does not solve the problem of our texts, since an army marching in a southerly direction would in this case come to Ḫubushkia before Gilzāni.