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The Nimrud Letters, 1952—Part V

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 August 2014

H. W. F. Saggs
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Extract

The principle governing the selection of the sixteen letters here published is that all illustrate some aspect of Assyrian administrative practice. Unfortunately the tablets represented in this group are, generally speaking, amongst the worst-preserved of the whole collection; this is an almost inevitable result of the method of publication so far followed, since, at least in the case of the longer letters, any better-preserved specimen is likely to have yielded details betraying it as arising from some specific historio-geographical setting, and so to have been included, or saved for inclusion, in another group. Only those letters which cannot usefully be treated in the context of some particular area or event are included here.

In some of these letters the main point at issue has, I am aware, escaped me. I have, however, despite this, ventured to offer full translations throughout, except where prevented by the fragmentary nature of the text, in the hope that they may serve as a starting-point for others. In doubtful passages I have attempted to bear in mind a maxim of my revered teacher, Professor Sidney Smith: “If it makes sense, it may well be wrong; if it makes nonsense, it is wrong.”

Type
Research Article
Information
IRAQ , Volume 21 , Issue 2 , Autumn 1959 , pp. 158 - 180
Copyright
Copyright © The British Institute for the Study of Iraq 1959

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References

page 158 note 1 See Iraq XV, Pt. I, p. 33 for an account of the discovery of these among a collection of letters at Nimrud in Z T 4. For letters from this collection already published see Iraq XVII, Pt. I, pp. 21–50Google Scholar and Plates IV–IX; XVII, Pt. 2, pp. 126–154 and Plates XXX–XXXV; XVIII, Pt. I, pp. 40–56 and Plates IX–XII; XX, Pt. 2, pp. 182–212 and Plates XXXVII–XLI.

page 176 note 1 See Cambridge Ancient History, III, 31–32Google Scholar.

page 176 note 2 See, e.g., Forrer, E., Die ProvinZeinteilung des assyrischen Reiches, 49 ff.Google Scholar; Donner, H., Mitteilungen des Instituts für Orientforschung, Bd. V, Heft 2 (1957), 162 fGoogle Scholar.

page 178 note 1 As in H.A.B.L. 340, rev. 1–18, assuming that the writer of that letter is to be identified with the qurbutu of the same name mentioned in H.A.B.L. 206, obv. 7.

page 179 note 1 The order of the periods of time mentioned shows that the Assyrian day, like the Jewish, was thought of as beginning at sunset.

page 179 note 2 Genesis xli 34–49.