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Lines 40–52 of the Banquet Stele of Aššurnaṣirpal II
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 August 2014
Extract
The inscription of which a small part forms the basis of this study, was discovered in a recess of courtyard E of the North-West Palace during the third season of the Nimrud excavations in 1951. A full account of the discovery is given in Chap. IV of Mallowan's Nimrud and its Remains, and I am pleased to make initial reference to this work in a volume dedicated to Lady Mallowan. For the text and a first discussion of the stele one turns to the edition of D. J. Wiseman published in Vol. XIV of this Journal, and his name also I should like, in this issue, to associate with these pages.
Since the publication of the stele in 1952, three new translations have appeared, namely, those of Jorgan Laessøe, A. L. Oppenheim, and A. K. Grayson, and a number of improvements to the text and interpretation have been made by Wolfgang Schramm, and, following collation, by J. N. Postgate. Despite these attentions, however, many problems still remain, and it is the purpose of this investigation to examine two passages at the end of col. i which remain obscure and unsatisfactory at the present time.
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- Copyright © The British Institute for the Study of Iraq 1968
References
1 People of Ancient Assyria (London, 1963), pp. 103–6Google Scholar.
2 “The Banquet of Ashurnasirpal II”, in Pritchard, James B. (ed.), ANET3 pp. 558–60Google Scholar.
3 Assyrian Royal Inscriptions, Part 2 (Wiesbaden, 1976), pp. 172–6Google Scholar.
4 Einleitung in die assyrischen Königsinschriften, II (Leiden, 1973), pp. 36–9Google Scholar.
5 The Governor's Palace Archive, CTN II (London, 1973), no. 266, pp. 238–40Google Scholar.
6 As collated by Postgate, op. cit., p. 239, line 41.
7 Many now discussed inPostgate's, “Notes on fruit in the Cuneiform sources”, Bulletin on Sumerian Agriculture III (Cambridge, 1987), pp. 115–44Google Scholar.
8 We keep to the familiar name despite the possibility of choice suggested by Parpola, S., AOAT 6, 276Google Scholar, and Grayson, A. K., ARI 2, 147Google Scholar note 639.
9 ÍD-tu.
10 GIŠ.ŠAR.MEŠ.
11 ˹A.MEŠ˺.
12 MUL AN-e.
13 GIŠ.ŠAR.
14 [GIŠ].NU.ÚR.[MA.(MEŠ?)], following JNP.
15 GIŠ.KIN.GEŠTIN.
16 Preferred to LÍL, see note.
17 Proposed reading according to photograph; JNP: si.
18 Reading GUR[UN], cf. end note.
19 For other examples cf. Landsberger, B., JNES 17 (1958), 57Google Scholar and note 8.
20 Cf. especially Deller, K., Die Briefe des Adad-Šumu-uṣur, AOAT 1 (1969), p. 51Google Scholar, also other references cited by Parpola, S., Letters from Assyrian Scholars, Part 2, AOAT 5/2 (1983), pp. 103 fGoogle Scholar.
21 See for such analysis EricaReiner, , Your thwarts in pieces, Your mooring rope cut, Poetry from Babylonia and Assyria (Michigan, 1985), p. 20Google Scholar.
22 100 GIŠ.NU.ÚR.MA.MEŠ 100 GIŠ.KIN.GEŠTIN.MEŠ.
23 Lambert, W. G., Iraq 27 (1965), 7CrossRefGoogle Scholar, rev. v 8.
24 FollowingThompson's, “laurel”, DAB 298 f.Google Scholar, the “cornel” (or, dogwood) and the “ash tree” have been suggested, or accepted, for giš.ma.nu/ e'ru by various scholars and dictionaries, and it is not denied that these make good sticks which is the whole point of the identification. But no doubt the stick or wand of e'ru wood used in the magical texts was something light and pliant which would speak more for the proposed identification than for the “tough sticks” of the cornel, CADE, 320. However, as essentially the “stick-tree”, it is well possible that more than one species or kind of tree was represented in the terminology.