J N Postgate – författare

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.

This is the second of two volumes of the State Archives of Assyria devoted to the administrative archives. Like the previous volume, SAA 7, it includes texts from Nineveh, for the most part published originally by C.H.W. Johns in his Assyrian Deeds and Documents, but also in the Assyrian Doomsday Book by the same author. On the other hand, this volume differs markedly from the previous one regarding contents: the texts here are concerned in general with the provincial administration of the imperial provinces and with taxation. Although in recent years a number of the texts have been edited and commented on (by the editors themselves as well as by other scholars) for their importance in the study of the mechanisms of the imperial political and economic system, it may be useful to provide here an overview of the nature of all the documents included in the volume, whether better or less known, whether immediately meaningful or partially obscure.