Chapter 7 - Assyrian Names

Summary

The identification of Assyrian personal names in Babylonian sources poses a challenge because there is a considerable degree of overlap between the name repertoires of Babylonia and Assyria in the first millennium BCE. As a first step, this chapter identifies three relevant categories of names attested in Babylonian sources: distinctively Assyrian names, distinctively Babylonian names, and names common to both Assyria and Babylonia. The next step is to isolate names belonging to the first category: those that are distinctively Assyrian. To this end, the chapter identifies four diagnostic features which may occur separately or in combination: (i) Assyrian divine elements; (ii) Assyrian toponyms; (iii) Assyrian dialectal forms, and (iv) vocabulary particular to the Neo-Assyrian onomasticon. Orthography and phonology, including the treatment of sibilants, are further considerations. The chapter also addresses the historical background since this provides important context for investigating the presence of Assyrian name-bearers in Babylonia, both before and after the fall of Assyria in 612 BCE.

Introduction

The Assyrian dialect of Akkadian in the first millennium BCE is closely related to the Babylonian dialect. This, together with their common cultural background and the high degree of interaction and mobility between the two regions means that the personal name repertoires of Assyria and Babylonia overlap to a significant degree. For example, Neo-Assyrian sources mention many individuals who can be identified as Babylonians, whether active in Assyria (as deportees, visitors, or settlers) or in Babylonia (as mentioned, for example, in Assyrian royal inscriptions, or in the Babylonian letters of the official correspondence). Their personal names, for the most part, are indistinguishable from those of the Assyrians themselves. These circumstances make it somewhat challenging to distinguish names of genuinely Assyrian derivation and to identify them in the Babylonian sources.

The Babylonian name repertoire is well established, thanks to the wealth of published Neo-Babylonian everyday documents. For Assyria, The Prosopography of the Neo-Assyrian Empire (PNA) includes not only biographies of all named individuals but also concise analyses of the linguistic background of individual names, together with the attested spellings (Radner 1998, 1999; Baker 2000, 2001, 2002, 2011). The series includes more than 21,000 disambiguated individuals bearing in excess of 7,300 names. The names themselves represent numerous linguistic backgrounds, including Akkadian (Assyrian and Babylonian), Aramaic, Hebrew, Moabite, West Semitic, Phoenician, Canaanite, Arabic, Egyptian, Greek, Iranian, Hurrian, Urarṭian, Anatolian, and Elamite. PNA covers texts of all genres in so far as they mention individuals by name; it forms the basis for any attempt to distinguish between Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian personal names. The focus of this chapter is on presenting the methodology and issues involved in identifying Assyrian names in Babylonian sources, with due consideration of the historical context. The names discussed here are intended to be representative cases; they do not constitute a complete repertoire of Assyrian names documented in Babylonian texts.¹

Before addressing current approaches to identifying Assyrian names in Babylonian sources, it is worth highlighting a key difference in Assyrian and Babylonian naming practices: while family names are commonly used in Babylonia by members of the traditional urban elite (see Chapter 4), they were never adopted in Assyria. Also, these same members of the Babylonian urban elite regularly identified themselves by their father’s name in everyday documents, whereas in Assyria, with the exception of members of scribal/scholarly families, genealogical information is far less common, being limited to the occasional inclusion of the father’s name. This means that the disambiguation of individuals is generally easier for Neo-Babylonian sources than for Neo-Assyrian ones, especially in the case of common names. One final point to bear in mind: feminine personal names make up around 7 per cent of the total number of names catalogued in PNA, so it is hardly surprisingly that Assyrian feminine personal names can only very rarely be identified in Babylonian texts.

Historical Background

As far as the onomastic material is concerned, the fall of Nineveh in 612 BCE forms a watershed for the presence of Assyrian name-bearers in Babylonia. Evidence prior to the fall of Assyria is slight: John P. Nielsen’s 2015 study, covering early Neo-Babylonian documents dated between 747 and 626 BCE, includes only six individuals bearing names that are clearly Assyrian according to the criteria discussed later in the chapter. They are: Aššur-ālik-pāni ‘Aššur is the leader’ (^IAN.ŠÁR–a-lik–pa-ni), Aššur-bēlu-uṣur ‘O Aššur, protect the lord!’ (^IAN.ŠÁR–EN–URÙ), Aššur-dannu ‘Aššur is strong’ (^IAN.ŠÁR-dan-nu), Aššur-ēṭir ‘Aššur has saved’ (^IdAŠ-SUR), Aššur-ilāˀī ‘Aššur is my god’ (^IAN.ŠÁR-DINGIR-a-a), and Mannu-kî-Arbail ‘Who is like Arbaˀil?’ (^Iman-nu-ki-i-LIMMÚ-DINGIR) (Nielsen 2015, 41–2, 196; cf. Zadok 1984, 5). Aššur-bēlu-uṣur is a particularly interesting case since he served as qīpu (‘(royal) resident’) of the Eanna temple of Uruk at some time between 665 and 648 BCE (Beaulieu 1997, 55–6). The question has been raised of whether he was posted there or belonged to a local family, but, as Karen Radner notes, the office of qīpu denoted the king’s representative as an ‘outsider’, in contrast to the other high temple officials who were drawn from the local urban élite (Radner 2017, 84; cf. Kleber 2008, 26–7). In general, though, this scarcity of Assyrian names in Babylonian sources prior to the fall is interesting because a lot of Assyrians were stationed or active in Babylonia during this period of more or less continuous Assyrian domination. The onomastic evidence suggests either that such people seldom bore diagnostically Assyrian names, or, if they did, then they did not integrate or mix with local people in a way that led to them featuring in the local transactions that dominate the extant sources from Babylonia.

The inhabitants of Assyria continued to worship the god Aššur long after the fall of Assyria in 612 BCE, as is clear from the Parthian onomasticon as late as the third century CE (Marcato 2018, 167–8). In fact, based partly on the evidence of the Cyrus Cylinder, Karen Radner has recently suggested that the post-612 BCE rebuilding of the Aššur temple at Assur may be attributed to Assyrians who had fled to Babylonia but who returned to Assur after the conquest of Babylon by Cyrus in 539 BCE (Radner 2017). Be that as it may, there is no direct contemporary evidence for actual deportations of Assyrians following the fall of their empire, though it seems clear that a great many people either fled or migrated into Babylonia from the north after 612 BCE. Evidence for this comes mainly in the form of Assyrian personal names in Babylonian texts written during the Neo-Babylonian and Achaemenid periods. In the case of Uruk, there is evidence for a flourishing cult of Aššur, with a temple or chapel dedicated to him in that city (Beaulieu 1997). Moreover, one of the texts discussed by Paul-Alain Beaulieu refers to ^lúŠÀ-bi–URU.˹KI*˺.MEŠ ‘people of Libbāli (= Assur)’ (Beaulieu 1997, 61). This evidence for an Assyrian presence in the south is complemented by the mention of some toponyms of Assyrian origin in Babylonian sources (Zadok 1984, 3). While Karen Radner attributed the establishment of the cult of Aššur in Uruk to fugitives who fled Assur following its conquest in 614 BCE (Radner 2017, 83–4), Paul-Alain Beaulieu considers the Urukean cult of Aššur to date back to the late Sargonid period, when Uruk was an important ally of Assyria (Beaulieu 2019, 8).

Text Corpora

The Neo-Babylonian and Achaemenid-period text corpora that contain Assyrian personal names derive especially from the temple sphere, including the archives of Eanna at Uruk and Ebabbar at Sippar. While these two cities dominate the material under discussion, Assyrian names have also been identified in archival texts written in other Babylonian cities, including Babylon and Nippur (Zadok 1984, 10–11). A detailed examination of the archival background of the relevant texts, which would assist in further contextualising the Assyrian name-bearers, is outside the scope of the present study; the individual archives and their contents are treated in summary form by Michael Jursa (2005).

Principles for Distinguishing Assyrian Names from Babylonian Names

For the sake of the present exercise, we may distinguish three major groups of Akkadian names of the first millennium BCE: (1) distinctively Neo-Assyrian personal names, (2) distinctively Neo-Babylonian personal names, and (3) names that were common to both Assyria and Babylonia. Only names belonging to the first group are of interest here, so our challenge is to define this group more precisely with reference to the other two groups. This process of distinguishing Neo-Assyrian from Neo-Babylonian personal names centres on four key features which may occur separately or in combination, namely: (i) Assyrian divine elements, (ii) Assyrian toponyms, (iii) Assyrian dialectal forms, and (iv) vocabulary particular to the Neo-Assyrian onomasticon. I shall deal with each of these features in turn in the following pages.

Names with Assyrian Divine Elements

With regard to Assyrian divine elements, Ran Zadok has remarked: ‘It should not be forgotten that the Assyrians worshipped Babylonian deities (as early as the fourteenth century), but the Babylonians did not worship Assyrian deities. Therefore, if a name from Babylonia contains an Assyrian theophoric element its bearer should be regarded as an Assyrian’ (Zadok 1984, 2). This is a sound methodological principle, although in practice it is of restricted application since there are few Assyrian deities that were not traditionally worshipped in Babylonia: the two pantheons overlap to a considerable extent. The following paragraphs deal with the relevant divine names, their spellings, and their reading.

Aššur and Iššar (Ištar)

The name of the god Aššur is commonly written AN.ŠÁR in Neo-Assyrian royal inscriptions from the reign of Sargon II on, although it is first attested considerably earlier, in the thirteenth century BCE (Deller 1987; Beaulieu 1997, 64, n. 22). However, in Babylonian sources personal names that contain the divine element AN.ŠÁR pose a problem of interpretation. As Simo Parpola notes in the introduction to the first fascicle of PNA, Aramaic spellings confirm that the divine name Ištar was pronounced Issar in Assyria, reflecting ‘the regular Neo-Assyrian sibilant change /št/ > /ss/’.² He also observes that the Babylonian version Iššar was sometimes shortened to Šar, attributing this to aphaeresis of the initial vowel and arguing that this ‘implies a stressed long vowel in the second syllable’.³ When this happens, the writing ^dŠÁR (Iššar) is indistinguishable from AN.ŠÁR (Aššur).⁴ The reading ^dŠÁR = Iššar is confirmed in some cases by syllabic writings attested for the same individual. Ran Zadok understands Iššar to be a Babylonian rendering of Assyrian Issar; therefore, in his view these names are unquestionably of Assyrian background (Zadok 1984, 4). Thus, in Babylonian texts we face the challenge of deciding whether the signs AN.ŠÁR represent Aššur or Ištar. In some instances a clue is offered by the predicative element of the name since some predicative elements work with the divine name Aššur but not with Ištar (Zadok 1984, 4, 7–8). An example of this is the name type DN-mātu-taqqin ‘O DN, keep the country in order!’, which is attested with the god Aššur but not with Ištar: PNA lists Aia-mātu-taqqin, Aššur-mātu-taqqin, and Nabû-mātu-taqqin (PNA 1/I, 91, 194–6; PNA 2/II, 846). Conversely, some names formed with AN.ŠÁR have a feminine predicate and therefore the divine element must be read ^dŠÁR = Iššar rather than Aššur, as in the case of ^IdŠÁR-ta-ri-bi ‘Issar has replaced’, a name which also has unequivocal writings with ^diš-tar- and ^diš-šar- (Zadok 1984, 4). Sometimes a predicate is attested with both Aššur and Issar, and thus it provides no guide as to the reading of the divine name. In the case of the temple É AN.ŠÁR, its identification as a shrine of Aššur rather than Ištar is supported by the fact that it is listed among the minor temples of Uruk, making it unlikely that the great temple of Ištar (i.e., Eanna) is intended (Beaulieu 1997, 61).

A further complication is the possibility that AN.ŠÁR might alternatively represent the deity Anšar, although Paul-Alain Beaulieu has argued convincingly against this on the grounds that Anšar was a primeval deity of only abstract character and was not associated with any known cult centre (Beaulieu 1997, 61). Note the attempt to ‘Assyrianise’ the Babylonian Epic of Creation by replacing Marduk with Aššur and equating Aššur (written ^dAN.ŠÁR) with Anšar, which resulted in genealogical confusion since Anšar was originally Marduk’s great-grandfather (Lambert 2013, 4–5). Anyway, a reading Anšar can certainly be discounted: the name ^Iman-nu–a-ki-i–É–AN.ŠÁR (Mannu-akî-bīt-Aššur ‘Who is like the Aššur temple?’), attested alongside other Aššur names, supports the idea that we are dealing with a deity worshipped in Babylonia at the time (Zadok 1984, 3). While it cannot be entirely ruled out that the name-givers intended to reference the original Aššur temple in Assyria as preserved in the folk memory of people of Assyrian descent living in sixth century Uruk, rather than the Aššur temple/chapel in Uruk, the name nevertheless attests to the continuing reverence of Aššur in Babylonia. It is also worth noting that this particular name type, Mannu-(a)kî-DN/GN/TN and variants, is considerably more common in Assyria than in Babylonia: PNA catalogues 47 such names borne by around 370 individuals (PNA 2/II, 680–700), compared with 7 names and less than 10 name-bearers listed by Knut L. Tallqvist in his Neubabylonisches Namenbuch (Tallqvist 1905, 99).

Names with the theophoric element written ^(d)aš-šur = Aššur are unambiguous. Note the potential confusion between the names ^IdAŠ–SUR = Aššur-ēṭir ‘Aššur has saved’ (Nielsen 2015, 42) and ^I/lúDIL–SUR = Ēdu-ēṭir ‘He has saved the only one’ (Nielsen 2015, 112), which are written with identical signs apart from the determinative(s); the latter occurs as a family name.

Ištar-of-Nineveh (Bēlet-Ninua)

The goddess Ištar-of-Nineveh, in the form Bēlet-Ninua (‘Lady of Nineveh’), occurs in Babylonian sources as an element of the family name Šangû-(Bēlet-)Ninua:

• ‒ PN₁ A-šú šá PN₂ A ^lúSANGA-^dGAŠAN-ni-nú-a (Nbn. 231:3–4, 14–15)

• ‒ PN₁ A-šú šá PN₂ A ^lúSANGA-ni-nú-a (VS 3 49:18–19)

In her study of Nineveh after 612, Stephanie Dalley points to these two Neo-Babylonian texts as evidence for the continuation of Nineveh after its fall in 612 BCE (Dalley 1993, 137). These instances allegedly involve a man who is called ‘son of the priest of the Lady of Nineveh’. However, this reflects a misunderstanding of the Neo-Babylonian convention for representing genealogy: the man in question is actually a member of the family called ‘Priest-of-Bēlet-Ninua’ (Šangû-Bēlet-Ninua), a clear parallel to other Neo-Babylonian family names of the form Šangû-DN, ‘Priest of DN’. It is uncertain exactly when the cult of Ištar-of-Nineveh was introduced into Babylonia; however, the goddess’s temple in Babylon is already mentioned in the topographical series Tintir which was likely compiled in the twelfth century BCE (George 1992, 7). Thus, while there is no way of knowing when the eponymous ancestor entered Babylonia (assuming he, like the cult itself, came from Assyria), this family name cannot be taken as evidence for the continuation of the city of Nineveh after 612 BCE.

The question has been raised as to whether the toponym that forms part of the divine name Bēlet-Ninua is actually Nineveh or a local place, Nina (reading ni-ná-a instead of ni-nú-a) in Babylonia (Zadok 1984, 10). However, there are reasons to suppose that this family name does actually refer to the Assyrian goddess Ištar-of-Nineveh. First, the name of Bēlet-Ninua’s temple in Babylon, Egišḫurankia, is the same as that of her temple in Assur, according to Andrew R. George, who understands Ninua in the divine name to represent Nineveh and not Nina (George 1993, 95, nos. 409 and 410). Second, her temple in Babylon is mentioned in an inscription of Esarhaddon (RINAP 4 48 r. 92–3), and it seems most unlikely that this would refer to the goddess of a very minor Babylonian settlement.

Eššu

In his study of Assyrians in Babylonia, Ran Zadok cites a number of names with the theophoric element Eššu (written -eš-šu/šú and -^dáš-šú), including Ardi(/Urdi?)-Aššu and Ardi(/Urdi?)-Eššu, Dalīli-Eššu, Dān-Eššu, Gubbanu(?)-Eššu, Kiṣir-Eššu, Sinqa-Eššu, Tuqnu-Eššu and Tuqūnu-Eššu, Ubār-Eššu, and Urdu-Eššu (Zadok 1984, 9). However, it should be noted that Eššu names do not feature prominently in the extant Neo-Assyrian onomasticon: only a single such name, Šumma-Eššu, is recorded (PNA 3/II, 1286 s.v. ‘Šumma-Ēši or Šumma-Eššu’). On the other hand, some of the Eššu names listed above have predicates that are typically Assyrian rather than Babylonian, namely Kiṣir-, Sinqa-, Tuqnu-/Tuqūnu-, and Urdu- (see later in chapter). This suggests an Assyrian background for these particular names, even though they are not yet attested in Assyrian sources.

We then have to confront the question of how to interpret the theophoric element Eššu. According to Ran Zadok, Eššu is ‘probably the same element as ˀš which is contained in names appearing in Aramaic dockets … and an Aramaic tablet … from the NA period’ (Zadok 1984, 9). These Aramaic dockets with ˀš feature on tablets which give the personal name also in Assyrian cuneiform, and in all instances where it is preserved the divine element is written ^d15, to be read Issar. For example, the names of the sellers of a house, Upāqa-ana-Arbail ‘I am attentive to Arbaˀil’ (^Ipa-qa-a-na-arba-ìl) and Šār-Issar ‘Spirit of Issar’ (^IIM-15), feature in an Aramaic caption on the edge of tablet SAA 14 47:15´–16´, dated in 617* BCE: pqnˀrbˀl / srˀš.⁵ If the association between Eššu and Aramaic ˀš(r) is correct, we are dealing with a variant of the divine name Ištar. This is compatible with the elements Kiṣir-, Sinqa-, Tuqūnu- and Urdu- listed earlier, which are all attested in Neo-Assyrian sources in names formed with Issar.

In PNA the name Šumma-Eššu (written ^Išum-ma–eš-šú) was translated ‘Truly Eši! [= Isis]’ and interpreted as ‘Akk. with Egypt. DN’ (Luukko, PNA 3/II, 1286). Although this is the only instance of an Eššu name in PNA, a number of other names of supposed Egyptian derivation are listed that contain the element Ēši/Ēšu, understood as ‘Isis’, namely: Abši-Ešu (^Iab-ši-e-šu), Dān-Ešu (^Ida-né-e-šu), Ēšâ (^Ie-ša-a), Eša-rṭeše (^Ie-šar-ṭe-e-[še]), and Ḫur-ši-Ēšu (^Iḫur-si-e-šú, ^Iḫur-si-ie-e-šú, ^Iḫur-še-še, ^Iḫur-še-šu). However, given that in Babylonian sources the element Eššu is written with -šš- and is particularly associated with typical Neo-Assyrian predicates, as noted earlier, it seems that regardless of whether Eššu is associated with Aramaic ˀš (= Issar), it should be kept separate from the Egyptian element Ēši/Ēšu, which is written with -š- and does not occur with those predicates.

Names Formed with Assyrian Toponyms

In addition to the names discussed here which contain Assyrian divine elements, there are a number of occurrences in Babylonian sources of personal names formed with Assyrian toponyms, notably Arbaˀil (modern Erbil): Arbailāiu ‘The one from Arbaˀil’ and Mannu-(a)kî-Arbail ‘Who is like Arbaˀil?’ (Zadok 1984, 8–9; 1985, 28). The feminine name ^fUrbil-ḫammu ‘Arbaˀil is the master’ (^fur-bi-il-ḫa-am-mu), borne by a slave, can be added to these (Zadok 1998). The family name Aššurāya ‘Assyrian’ (^Iaš-šur-a-a), based on the city name Assur, is also attested. Since none of the members of this family bore Assyrian names, Ran Zadok suggests that the family’s ancestor migrated to Babylonia before the Neo-Babylonian period (Zadok 1984, 2). As I noted already, the Assyrians did not use family names, so the adoption of Aššurāya as a family name must reflect the ‘Babylonianisation’ of the descendants. Related to this phenomenon is the presence of Assyrian toponyms in Babylonian sources, such as Aššurītu, written ^uruáš-šur-ri-tú (Zadok 1984, 3); there is no telling when such toponyms were originally introduced into Babylonia.

Names with Assyrian Dialectal Forms

Examples in this category include names formed with the Assyrian precative -lāmur ‘may I see’ (Bab. -lūmur), and nouns in Assyrian dialectal form, such as urdu ‘servant’ (Bab. ardu). The Assyrian D-stem imperative -balliṭ ‘keep alive!’ (Bab. -bulliṭ) comprises another potentially distinctive form, though I know of no example of the name type DN-balliṭ attested in Babylonian sources to date. Examples of names with Assyrian dialectal forms include:

• Pāni-Aššur-lāmur ‘May I see the face of Aššur’ (^IIGI–AN.ŠÁR–la-mur; Beaulieu 1997, 59–60). The use of Neo-Assyrian dialect was not always consistent since ^IIGI–AN.ŠÁR–lu-mur is also attested (Zadok 1984, 6). In UCP 9/2 57 the name is written with both -lāmur (l. 8) and -lūmur (l. 4) (Beaulieu 1997, 59).

• Pāni-Bēl-lāmur ‘May I see the face of Bēl’ (^Ipa-ni–^dEN–la-mur; Beaulieu 1997, 59–60).

• Urdu-Eššu ‘Servant of Eššu’ (^Iur-du-eš-šú, Zadok 1984, 2). The common use of the logogram ÌR often makes it impossible to tell whether a name includes urdu or ardu.

In addition, the Neo-Assyrian onomasticon – unlike the Neo-Babylonian – includes names formed with the imperative of riābu ‘to replace’ (Rīb(i)-DN) as well as with the preterite (Erība-DN), though note that logographic writings with ^ISU- as first element are ambiguous. A number of elements particular to Assyrian occur only with Assyrian divine names, according to Ran Zadok: ‘It is worth pointing out that the exclusively Assyrian forms urdu “slave”, rīb (Bab. erība), bēssunu (Bab. bēlšunu) and iššiya (reflecting NA issiya) “with me”; Bab. ittiya) are recorded in N/LB only as the predicates of -eššu and ^dŠÁR names’ (Zadok 1984, 4–5).

Names Formed with Vocabulary Characteristic of the Assyrian Onomasticon

In discussing the divine name Eššu, I identified a number of Assyrian names formed with characteristic vocabulary items, namely (with translations following PNA): Kiṣir-DN (‘Cohort of DN’), Mannu-(a)kî-DN (‘Who is like DN?’), Sinqi-DN (‘Test of DN’), Tuqūn-DN (‘Order of DN’), Tuqūnu-ēreš (‘He [a deity] has desired order’), and Tuqūnu-lāmur (‘Let me see order!’). To these we can add Unzaraḫ-[…] (^Iun-za-ra-aḫ-[…]; Zadok 1998); compare the names Unzarḫu (‘Freedman’?), Unzarḫu-Aššur, and Unzarḫu-Issar (PNA 3/II, 1387–8).

Orthography and Phonology

In the writing of Assyrian names in Neo-Assyrian sources, the divine determinative is often omitted, whereas in Neo-Babylonian this is only rarely the case. In Babylonian the divine name Ea is rather consistently written ^dé-a, whereas in Assyrian it is often written ^(d)a-a and, more rarely, ia, rendered Aia (Parpola in PNA 1/I, xxv–xxvii). Note that Aia is not to be confused with the goddess Aya (^(d)a-a), spouse of the sun god Šamaš. Otherwise, in terms of phonology, the main difference between the writing of Assyrian and Babylonian names lies in the treatment of the sibilants. We have already seen how the Assyrian divine element Issar (Ištar) was rendered Iššar in Babylonian. The sibilant š in Babylonian names may be rendered s in Neo-Assyrian: for example, the common Neo-Babylonian name Šumāya was sometimes rendered Sumāya, written ^Isu-ma-a-a and ^Isu-ma-ia in Neo-Assyrian sources (PNA 3/I, 1157–8). This tendency of Assyrian scribes to ‘Assyrianise’ Babylonian names may hinder the identification of Babylonians in the Assyrian sources. The same is true of the converse: if a Babylonian scribe were to render an Assyrian name by, for example, changing -lāmur to -lūmur, then there would be no way of identifying the individual as Assyrian in the absence of an Assyrian theophoric element or of further corroborating evidence.