This paper investigates how Assyrian kings protected their material legacies for posterity and why in some prominent instances such protections failed, with a particular focus on the palaces of Kalḫu and Nineveh during the Sargonid Period. I approach this question through the lens of intergenerational reciprocity; Assyrian worldviews provided various channels through which past, present, and future kings could engage with one another in reciprocal and coercive relationships across time. Unlike curses and blessings, which were relatively easy for Assyrian kings to disregard, these reciprocal relationships provided more compelling incentives for rulers to honour and preserve their predecessors’ material legacies. However, practical or ideological concerns would sometimes result in the need to alter buildings in ways that damaged the material legacy of a past ruler. In some of these instances, steps were taken to symbolically compensate the past ruler in question for this damage. In this fashion, rulers were able to negotiate the ideological tension between tradition and innovation to preserve historical memory while adapting living cultural heritage to meet current needs.

This article presents editions and hand-copies of the cuneiform tablet BM 46590 and the tablet fragments K.13919 and 82-3-23, 108. These new pieces either duplicate or expand the ritual for undoing the effects of unpropitious lunar omens known from K.6018+//, providing new information on Akkadian incantation-prayers to the moon god. Most importantly, the prayer “Sîn 5”, previously known only from a couple of fragmentary lines, can now be read almost in full.