ASSUR - Böcker

Legal texts from the imperial archives of Nineveh are a source of foremost importance not only to the study of the legal practices and economic life of the Neo-Assyrian empire, but above all to the prosopography and chronology of the period. Yet their information potential has never been fully utilized, mainly because the texts can only be consulted through two outdated publications, C.H.W. Johns's Assyrian Deeds and Documents and A. Ungnad's and J.Kohler's Asyrische Rechtsurkunden. In anticipation of a re-edition of the texts, whose completion still lies years ahead, the present article offers collations to about 300 texts of the corpus providing, besides numerous improvements to the copies of Johns, also a touchstone for earlier collations by Ungnad and others.

An important discovery of two large Neo-Assyrian sculptures was made in 1982 at Tell Ajaja on the Khabur River: a lamassu with the inscribed name of Mus?zib Ninurta, and a winged bull. Mus?zib-Ninurta is known as the governor of the city of Saddikanni in 820 B.C., and he is certainly the same as the individual mentioned on the lamassu of Tell Ajaja. Preliminary excavations undertaken at the site in 1982 have confirmed that the two sculptures were in situ at the entrance to a room in a monumental building.

The evidence for Assyrians in Babylonia during the Chaldean and Achaemenian periods. is presented in section II below. This evidence consists mainly of onomastic material which is thoroughly analyzed. The prosopography of the Assyrians consists of 116 individuals who lived in Babylonia between 626/5 and 404/3 (or 349/8) B.C. The analysis of the onomastic material is also of linguistic interest as it reveals that several Assyrian dialectal features were still current after the fall of the Assyrian empire.

Khabur Ware and Nuzi Ware are two types of painted pottery in northern Mesopotamia during the second millennium B.C. which have hitherto been treated independently of their respective archaeological contexts on the basis of their painted decoration. Both categories of painted wares were regarded as intrusive and were accordingly attributed to intrusive peoples - namel, the Hurrians. The present study reviews the evidence for Khabur Ware and Nuzi Ware and examines the stratigraphic sequence at a number of key sites in north Mesopotamia and north Syria from the viewpoint of a wider Syro-Mesopotamian frame in order to determine the extent to which these two pottery categories were intrusive and that to which they were indigenous. The resulting modifica tions of the conventional Khabur Ware and Nuzi Ware classifications show that while these two wares are quite distinct from each other in terms of origin, function, date, and distribution, neither category of painted pottery is entirely unprecedented in Mesopotamia and, neither, therefore, can be representative of intrusive peoples. Although the distinction in date and distribution between Khabur Ware and Nuzi Ware may reflect changing spheres of political and commercial contacts, the discrepancy between the function of these two wares precludes the same explanation for their origin. Only Nuzi Ware may be con ceived as a product of political and economic conditions.

This study collects, under section II, the Hurrian personal names preserved in the Old Babylonian tablets uncovered at Tell al-Rimah. A smaller list ( Pi,1) gives names which cannot be analyzed by the author. The third section (III) presents a list of Hurrian elements involved in making up the names. While it is stressed that names of Hurrian coinage do not necessarily reflect Hurrian ethnicity, an introduction: gives statistics on the names of Hurrian derivation; 2. discusses the stratification of Hurrians within Rimah's society and 3. speaks to the ethnic' concentration of Hurrians during the various phases of Old Babylonian Rimah.

In 743 B.C., Tiglath-pileser III led a victorious march against Sarduri of Urartu and his vassals. A comparison of the four extant Assyrian relations of that campaign yields a clear picture of its geographical arena. Unfortunately, Waldemar Belck, in 1904, utterly confused this picture by his identifications of two battlegrounds, Kistam and Halpi, with modern Ku?tam and Halfeti. These were uncritically followed by generations of scholars, and can still be found in serious publications . This paper, based on Assyrian and Urar?ian records, as well as on the study of the natural relief and road connections of the region in question , proposes a different reconstruction of Tiglath -pileser line of advance and of the battlegrounds along it.

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.

The real estate records from the so-called Tehip-tilla house in Nuzi comprise a private archive. The functions of this archive are described in the present article. One function w that of the catalog, to keep track of the many real properties acquired by members of ih family. The nature of the tablets implies, however, that this function was secondary The and quantity of documentation preserved in the archive suggest that the primary function of both the individual tablet and archive was legal, to demonstrate before the judiciary and other parties outside the family circle that real estate entered that circle legally or changed hands within the family by means other than normal inheritance. This function accounts for five characteristics of the archive. 1) Records of acquisition are highly detailed and drawn up at the time of acquisition2) Tablets most usually record one transaction each. If the land described were to be subsequently realienated, the appropriate tablet could thus conveniently be transferred with the property3Real estate tablets mentioning no member of the Tehip-tilla family are found in the family's archive. In light of 2), these represent non-current land records acquired by the family members when they acquired real estate with a prior history of alienation. 4No records of alienation of real estate are found in the archive. Such records would be inconsistent with the archive's main function5) Records of real estate litigation are common and attest to family ownership of real property. Therefore, all such records commissioned describe the family's legal victories. The legal function of archival tablets is itself legal victories. The legal function of archival tablets is itself propertyTherefore, all such records commissioned describe the family's legal victories. The legal function of archival tablets is itself described in these court accounts. The primary function of the archive, to buttress the family's claims to real estate against outside challenge, failed to protect individual members against claims by their own relatives. This led to intra-family disputes.

An edition of twelve previously unpublished texts: eleven from the Louvre and one in a private collection, containing a letter, juridical texts of the genre of KAJ and some administrative documents. These texts are of diverse provenienceNos. 1-3 certainly come from Assur Nos. 9-11 were said to have come from Tell Amuda by the dealer; the site is identified with Urkis It must be noted that the tablets, on the other hand , mention Kulishinas in a privileged fashion. Nos. 5-8 may come, in part, from the same Tell No 12 from the site of Suri These texts, in their diversity, allow us to examine a part of the Middle Assyrian documentation, in particular the question of knowing whether or not the Middle Assyrian Code mentions the ilku the status of the villagers ( alaiuand their the clause of the reapers..., etc., or approaches the question of miksu. The edition contains copies of the texts and diverse indices ( PN, GN, and DN) as well as the list of texts with commentaries . Begun under the direction of J. Nougayrol , by M.-J. Aynard , it was completed by J.-M. Durand. Mr. P. Amiet has kindly appended to this study a sketch of the seals and a commentary about them.

In the latter fourteenth and thirteenth centuries B.C., the Middle Assyrian state under went a major expansion which raised it to the stature of a great power in the Near East. The efforts made to rule the newly acquired territories are the subject of this paper. The first part is an edition of five previously unpublished Middle Assyrian documents from the Yale Babylonian Collection, which bear on the issue of provincial government. Although not an archive, all may be classified as economic and administrative (they include an agricultural loan and records of disbursement), all date apparently from the thirteenth century, and all come from the provincial site of Tell Amuda, or Kulishinas as it seems to have been called in this period. The texts thus link up, at least in date and provenience , with several of those published by M.-J. Aynard , J.-M. Durand , and P. Amiet in Assur 3/1 (July, 1980). With these texts as a point of departure, the paper goes on to collect the other evi dence for the system of provincial governance in Middle Assyria during the fourteenth and thirteenth centuries.The stages of growth of that system are charted, and the nature of its various territorial units and the personnel who staffed them is analyzed in detail. The point is made that by the thirteenth century, at least, the provincial officials formed a clear class of royal dependents. Any effort to see in them testimony for an oligarchic control of the state by a small group of great families is unwarranted.

Some suggestions are offered for the restoration of the composition of the set of narrative reliefs from Room VII of Sargon's palace at Khorsabad. Sargon is seen as the central figure in the composition of each of the three walls and evidence is offered for equally formal composition in other rooms at Khorsabad. Distinctive features of the style during Sargon's reign are identified and contrasted to the styles of other reigns. Photographs of all of the extant slabs together with the Botta drawings permit close comparison of extant originals with the drawings. New photographs illustrate six previously publi shed slabs. Slabs and 5 ( Plates V and VI ) have not been published before.

The silver situla, here edited, is one of the few items of this type which are well known from the royal Assyrian reliefs connected with the ceremony of the tree. The inscription is a dedication of the ob ject by the Urartian king Ispuini (ca. 825-810 B.C.) for his grandson Inuspua who has here the otherwise unknown title of kib?ru (or kibarru). The language is Assyrian and this is the first case of a non monumental inscription of an Urartian king in this language. It is evident that an Assyrian scribal school existed at the Urartian capital Tuspa, at least at the time of Sarduri Ist, father of Ispuini, and now it is also probable that a sort of bilinguialism was present within the leading class of Urartu. The situla is to be dated around 810 B.C.