A Companion to Assyria

by Eckart Frahm

  The idea of the king altering the wording of old texts contravened the prevailing norms of scholarship of the time, according to which literary and scholarly texts that survived from the past were considered the only true versions, created by gods, sages, or scholars of previous millennia (Lambert 1962). Consequently, no one usually had the authority to alter the established text. In their colophons, the scribes claim to have “copied (the tablet) according to its original and collated (the text)” or “copied, checked, and collated” it (Hunger 1968: 3–4). Many colophons refer to the place of origin of the tablet copied from, in order to emphasize its legitimacy (Hunger 1968: 6–7). The aforementioned textual interventions of Neo‐Assyrian king were legitimized by their exalted status, far above that of a “normal” scholar and more akin to one of the “seven sages” (Pongratz‐Leisten 1999: 309–11). Sennacherib was the first king who claimed that he had a “vast mind, equal to (the mind of) the sage Adapa” (OIP 2, 117 l. 4). Esarhaddon was also said to have acted like Adapa: “the deeds of the king, [my lord], are like those of (the sage) Adapa” (SAA X 380 lines 3’–4’). “[The king], my [l]ord, [is as perfect] as Adap[a],” as another letter has it (SAA XVI 169 rev. 9’), refers either to Esarhaddon or to Assurbanipal. Marduk‐šumu‐uṣur, chief diviner of the king, flatters Assurbanipal by writing: “the king, lord of kings, is an offspring of a sage and Adapa: you have surpassed the wisdom of the Apsû and all scholarship” (SAA X 174 obv. 8–9). Assurbanipal himself, who was educated in the scribal arts when he was young (Livingstone 2007), describes his scholarly skills in an often‐quoted inscription (L4, Livingstone 2007: 100–1):

  I learned the craft of the sage Adapa, the secret knowledge, the whole of the scribal craft. I can discern celestial and terrestrial portents and deliberate in the assembly of the experts. I am able to discuss the series “If the liver is a mirror image of the sky” with the (most) competent experts. I can solve convoluted reciprocals and calculations that do not come out evenly. I have read cunningly written text in Sumerian and obscure Akkadian, the interpretation of which is difficult. I have examined stone inscriptions from before the flood, which are sealed, stopped up, mixed up.

  In one of his prism inscriptions, Assurbanipal reflects on the scholarly education that he received after being made crown prince and moving to his new residence in Nineveh. There, in the bīt ridûti, “I myself, Assurbanipal, learned the wisdom of (which the patron is) Nabû, the entire scribal art; I examined the teachings of all the masters, as many as there are” (Asb Prism A I 31–3; Borger 1996: 209).

  As supreme scholars, the Assyrian kings made use of scholarship not only to protect themselves and their power, but also to establish their royal authority on other levels. Since scholarship was closely connected with religion and the king was closely connected to the gods, who had literally “chosen” and “nominated” him for kingship, Assyrian kings felt entitled in certain situations to also sponsor the rewriting of religious text. Sennacherib, for example, after destroying the city of Babylon in 689 BCE, revised the widely known Babylonian “Epic of Creation” (enūma eliš) as part of a religious reform instigated by him. The epic describes how the gods were created and how Marduk, the highest god of the Babylonian pantheon, finally prevailed in a battle against the primeval sea‐monster Tiamat and created the world out of her. The other gods, in turn, chose Marduk as their king and made the Esagil temple, the residence of Marduk in Babylon, their favorite meeting place and the navel of the world. To make this story part of Sennacherib’s reform theology, the Assyrian scholars produced a new version: they replaced the god Marduk with Assur, the highest god of the Assyrian pantheon, and Babylon with Ashur, the religious capital of Assyria (Frahm 2010). Supreme divine power was, in this way, transferred to the highest god of the Assyrian pantheon, and the Assyrian king became the sovereign of the center of the world. This new version of the Epic of Creation clearly justified the Assyrian king’s rule over Babylonia and the rest of the world.

  The Archaeology of the Royal Library in Nineveh

  The written sources give us a good idea of the composition of the royal library in Nineveh, but the information needs to be correlated with archaeological findings. The ancient site of Kuyunjik (the main citadel of Nineveh) has been surveyed and excavated at various times since 1820 (Reade 2000: 392–4). Today, most of the famous sculptures and nearly all of the cuneiform tablets from Nineveh are housed in the British Museum in London. When Austen Henry Layard began to work at Nineveh in 1846 and 1847, he found two rooms full of cuneiform tablets in the so‐called Southwest Palace on Kuyunjik (Layard 1853: 345), the most important of the many discoveries of inscribed materials at the site. In the course of the years, large numbers of cuneiform tablets have been found on Kuyunjik in the Southwest Palace, the North Palace or bīt ridûti, the areas of the Ištar‐ and Nabû‐Temple, and in some additional spots on and off of the mound (see Figure 21.2). As one would expect, none of the Nineveh libraries and archives have been found intact. When the Babylonians and Medes conquered Nineveh in 612 BCE, the looters destroyed most of the buildings with fire, especially the royal palaces and temples. When the buildings collapsed, the libraries, most of which had been located on the second floors of the buildings, crashed through the ceilings into the rooms of the ground floor. The tablet fragments were widely scattered, and in the Southwest Palace, pillagers seem to have kicked tablets about while roaming around the burning palace, adding to the chaos (King 1914: xii note 2). In addition, early excavators hardly ever recorded the exact places where the tablets were found. Only in a few cases, therefore, can the exact findspots of tablets be traced. Reade (1986) and Parpola (1986) have made the following general observations:

  The Southwest Palace housed a royal library, with many tablets using the shortest version of Assurbanipal’s colophons (Hunger 1968 no. 317). The tablets have a rich red color, which might be the result of firing. This could have been done deliberately or happened during the looting of the city. Since most of the library texts were found on the floor in or near rooms XL and XLI, the library must have been on the second floor, above these rooms.

  The Southwest Palace also housed archival texts from the reigns of Sennacherib, Esarhaddon, and Assurbanipal.

  Since the scholarly and literary tablets that are known to come from the North Palace display longer versions of Assurbanipal’s colophons (Hunger 1968 nos. 318–45), these tablets might represent a more “private” library of the king. In contrast to the red color of the tablets from the Southwest Palace, the clay of some of the tablets from the North Palace is light brown.

  The North Palace housed archival texts from the reign of Sargon II and the so‐called post‐canonical period (from the 640 s onwards).

  Most of the Old Babylonian tablets found at Kuyunjik are known to come from the Ištar‐Temple.

  Some of the Middle Assyrian tablets and the tablets older than the seventh century BCE come from the area between the Ištar‐ and the Nabû‐temple.

  Figure 21.2 Libraries and archives located on Kuyunjik (drawn by J.C. Fincke, after Reade 2000: 407–18, 421–7, and Smith 1875: 94–102, 138–43).

  It is obvious that the libraries of the temples of Ištar and Nabû (Reade 2000: 422–3) were the traditional old libraries of Nineveh, which corresponds to the situation in other Assyrian cities, e.g. Kalu (see above, “Libraries of Neo‐Assyrian scholars and temples”). Judging from the script of the tablets, the libraries of both the Southwest and the North Palace were, in contrast, newly established. They contained tablets written in Neo‐Assyrian and Neo‐Babylonian ductus. Whether the Neo‐Babylonian tablets were primarily acquired in Babylonia cannot be determined without further analysis of the clay of the tablets. They could, of course, also have been written by Babylonian scholars at the Assyrian court (Fincke 2014).

  The Tablets of the Library Collection in Nineveh Written by Babylonian Scholars

  Several problems prevent us from establishing an exact number for the tablets and tablet
fragments from Nineveh that are housed in the British Museum. Firstly, many smaller fragments have still not yet been given a museum number. Secondly, the museum catalogues aggregate all inscribed clay objects – tablets, prisms, cylinders, and sometimes even pottery – into the same group. A short description of all of the inscribed pieces from Nineveh (about 34,900 altogether) is given in the seven catalogue volumes of the Kuyunjik collection that are published so far (Bezold 1889–96; King 1914; Lambert and Millard 1968; Lambert 1992). To give an idea of the number of tablets, the latest calculations provide figures between 30,300 and 31,000 items, excluding bricks (Reade 2000: 421). This is probably close to the real number, and so, for convenience, the figure of 31,000 tablets and fragments will be used for the following calculations.

  It is difficult to say how many complete tablets this number represents. By assuming that, on average, one complete tablet comprises six fragments, we could propose that there were 5167 tablets at the time of Nineveh’s destruction. But, since many of the smaller tablets did not break at all, at least not into rejoinable pieces, an estimated average of five or even four fragments per tablet seems more reasonable, giving a figure of 6,200 or 7,750 tablets. 5,949 pieces have been rejoined to other fragments (see www.fincke‐cuneiform.com/nineveh/index.htm), so that the total number of tablets and fragments can be reduced to about 25,051 (i.e. 31,000 minus 5,949). In addition to scholarly, literary, and historical texts, this figure includes about 3,500 letters and administrative texts (published in the SAA series), tablets that one would more likely expect to be stored in archives, rather than in libraries (Pedersén 1998: 2–3). All these calculations may still not accurately reflect the actual size of the Nineveh libraries. It should be remembered that some tablets might have been removed from the libraries before the destruction of Nineveh. Furthermore, if we had access to the many wooden writing‐boards that have not survived, our assessment of the numbers and types of texts collected at Nineveh would most likely be somewhat different.

  With regard to the composition of the royal libraries at Nineveh, definite numbers can currently only be given for the tablets written in Babylonian ductus. Of the 4,283 registered Babylonian tablets from Nineveh, 778 pieces have been rejoined to other fragments to date. So, disregarding the uncounted, tiny fragments and flakes, we can determine that there are 3,505 registered Babylonian tablets and fragments that were unearthed in Nineveh and are now housed at the British Museum. This figure comprises about 14 percent of the total number of 25,051 tablets and fragments found in Nineveh. It can be subdivided as follows:

  Library texts: 1,561

  Divination reports:  637

  Archival texts: 1,068

  Not classified 239

  The Babylonian library texts found in Nineveh are either oblong, single‐column tablets or large tablets with normally two columns on each side. Smaller tablets, either in portrait format (i.e. written parallel to the short axis) or landscape format (i.e. written parallel to the long axis), were used for excerpts and shorter texts. Tablets with three or more columns on each side, such as the ones that were found in Ashur and Kalu (see above, “Introduction”), were used in Nineveh only for lexical texts and explanatory lists, and very occasionally for Sammeltafeln that combine texts normally written on several tablets (Fincke 2013: 584).

  The library texts written in Babylonian ductus (see Table 21.1 above) consist primarily of divinatory (46.64 percent) and secondarily of religious texts (28.83 percent). This is in contrast to the libraries in Kalu and uzirina, where medical texts make up the second largest group (27.14 percent in Kalu and 18.67 percent in uzirina), whereas medical texts at Nineveh form the third largest group (5 percent). The texts transmitted by Babylonians were clearly focused on divination and religion, including rituals and prayers. This mirrors the information from the written sources about the acquisition of texts for the royal library in Nineveh (see above, “Assembling tablets for Assurbanipal’s library in Nineveh”).

  Any research on divinatory texts in Nineveh must also consider the divination reports, small tablets written in landscape format. Strictly speaking, divination reports are archival documents (see the definition in Pedersén 1998: 3) and not library texts. However, they contain quotations from the official divination series, especially in the celestial divination reports (Fincke 2010: 35–9), which makes them almost as vital for further reference as the library copies of the divination series themselves. Moreover, the number of divination reports written by Babylonians (637) in relation to the number of divinatory “library” texts written in Babylonian script (728) highlights their relevance within the royal tablet rooms. Therefore, in the following overview (see also Table 21.2), both groups of texts will be discussed together.

  Table 21.2 Divinatory texts from Nineveh written in Babylonian ductus

  Kind of divination Library texts Divination reports Total

  number percentage number percentage number percentage

  Celestial omens 343 47.12 330 51.81 673 49.45

  Extispicy 112 15.38 285 44.74 397 29.17

  Terrestrial omens 70 9.62 1 0.15 71 5.22

  Series iqqur īpuš 6 0.82 6 0.44

  Teratomantic omens 5 0.69 5 0.37

  Physiognomic omens 2 0.27 2 0.15

  Hemerology 1 0.14 4 0.63 1 0.07

  Various divination 189 25.96 17 2.67 206 15.13

  Total 728 100 637 100 1,361 100

  Almost 50 percent of all divinatory texts from Nineveh written in Babylonian ductus belong to the group of celestial and meteorological omens. The reason for this is the nature of celestial ominous signs: they can be seen by everyone and provide predictions for the whole country and its people as well as for the king. This feature makes celestial omens the preferred means by which the king could prepare for events of more than regional significance. Extispicy was a means of answering specific questions and referred only to the individual enquirer. That the king used this tool regularly can be seen from the high number of reports concerning questions asked in specific extispicy procedures (SAA IV), 44.74 percent of all divination reports. The writing of such reports was introduced to the Assyrian court by Babylonian experts. As the Assyrians took over the practice, some features were changed (SAA IV: XIII–XIV; Fincke 2003/04: 117–18). The earlier texts, written solely by Babylonians and commonly called “oracle inquiries,” date to the reign of Esarhaddon. They are distinctly pillow‐shaped and begin with an address to the Sungod: “Šamaš, great lord, give me a firm positive answer to what I am asking you.” When Assyrians gradually took over the practice, they initially signed the reports written by Babylonians with their own names, indicating their close monitoring of the procedure. A little later, they began to write out the complete tablets themselves. The pillow shape of the reports changed to a more typical tablet shape, and the address to the Sungod was omitted. These later reports are known as “extispicy reports” and are common for the reign of Assurbanipal. We have 216 “oracle enquiries” and 69 “extispicy reports” written by Babylonians and more than 120 “extispicy reports” written by Assyrian experts. Other divination methods, such as terrestrial omens and hemerologies, occur more infrequently on tablets written by Babylonians (see above, Table 21.2).

  The second largest group of library texts from Nineveh written by Babylonians are the religious texts (36.77 percent). These can be subdivided according to language – Akkadian (360), Sumerian (30), and bilingual Akkadian–Sumerian (184) – or by areas of expertise – cultic songs performed by lamentation priests (kalûtu), exorcist’s lore (āšipūtu) with rituals and incantations, and diviner’s lore (bārûtu) with extispicy rituals and tāmītu‐texts (see Table 21.3 and Lambert 2007). The compositions the Assyrian king requested from Babylonian scholars (see above, “Assembling tablets for Assurbanipal’s library in Nineveh”) belonged to all three of the aforementioned professions. Of the Akkadian religious texts, more than 57 percent belong to the exorcist’s lore but none to the lamentations. The latter are well represented among the S
umerian (26.67 percent) and the bilingual (36.41 percent) texts written by Babylonians. Religious texts related to divination (bārûtu) are attested only among the Akkadian texts (10.55 percent). This is to be expected, since divinatory texts are known only from the Old Babylonian period onwards, when Sumerian as a spoken language had already died out.

  Table 21.3 Religious texts from Nineveh written in Babylonian ductus

  Language Akkadian Sumerian bilingual

  Expertise number percentage number percentage number percentage

  Lamentations (kalûtu) 8 26.67 67 36.41

  Exorcist’s lore (āšipūtu) 208 57.78 3 10.00 91 49.46

  Diviner’s lore (bārûtu) 38 10.55

  Varia 114 31.67 19 63.33 26 14.13

  Total 360 100 30 100 184 100

  The 1068 archival texts and fragments are the second largest group of texts written in Babylonian ductus. The vast majority of them, altogether 993 items, are letters, mostly sent to the Assyrian court in Nineveh by Babylonians cooperating with the crown but living in their native country. But Babylonians were also working in the inner circle of the empire’s administration, as can be shown from a group of sixty‐two letters in Babylonian ductus in which the Assyrian king or the crown prince addressed various officials in the south. Found at Nineveh, they were apparently duplicates of the letters actually sent (Fincke 2003/04: 136).