J N Postgate - Böcker

Three Neo-Assyrian legal and administrative tablets and four Middle Assyrian administrative fragments, probably mostly from Assur, are discussed here. The texts are published in copy and transliteration, with transliterations and commentary where appropriate. They include part of a large administrative list of textiles, including military dress, in the houses of high state officials of the reign of Tukulti- ninurta I. Of the Neo- Assyrian documents one is an administrative note to do with copper and AN.GA another adds to the small number of known Prozessurkunden.

This penultimate volume of CTN provides an up-to-date edition and commentary on two major archives from the Kalhu acropolis, from the field seasons of 1953-1956: the business documents (mostly grain loans on triangular dockets) and a few administrative texts from the Nabu Temple (Part I: texts Nos. 1-59) and the legal documents from the household of Šamaš-šarru-uṣur (Part II: Nos. 60-115); also included are three texts from the “Town Wall Palace” (Part III: Nos. 116-118). S. Herbordt provides a new study of the seal impressions based on drawings and photos, and photographs of both the impressions and unsealed tablets are included where available. The handcopies on Plates 1-44 are from Wiseman, Parker, Postgate and Mattila.Many of these texts were edited previously by Wiseman and Parker in articles in Iraq, but some were only catalogued and others had lain for years uncopied in both the Iraq Museum and the British Museum. Bringing them all together has enabled a more detailed study of the two main archives with the benefit of the advances in our understanding of Neo-Assyrian over the last half century. This gives a valuable insight into the activities of both a major temple and an elite household in the 8th-7th centuries BC.