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Tablets from the Sippar library III. Two Royal Counterfeits

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 August 2014

F. N. H. Al-Rawi  and
A. R. George
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Extract

This article continues the publication of tablets from the library of the temple of Šamaš at Sippar begun in volume 52 of this journal. Presented here are the library's copies of two texts which have in common the fact that they are not what they purport to be: Maništūšu's cruciform monument, and a literary letter of Samsu-iluna. Both texts are clearly fictitious compositions which postdate their supposed royal authors by a long time. Their purpose was apparently to supply evidence of historical precedent. The invented evidence which these documents present as fact would be intended to substantiate or advance the claims of those who wrote them. While both tablets are duplicates of known texts, each adds to a greater or lesser degree to our knowledge of these texts, not least by filling lacunae and by confirming or rebutting the restorations of previous editors.

The identification of a tablet from niche 8 B as a duplicate of the last column of a large Neo-Babylonian exercise tablet from Ur allows this text to be properly identified for the first time. It is one of several royal letters in Akkadian, some apparently genuine, others certainly bogus, which entered the scribal tradition and survive in late copies. This example purports to be from Samsu-iluna, the son and successor of Hammurapi of Babylon, to Enlil-nādin-šumi, a man whose several titles identify him as a very senior figure, and apparently a royal prince. As is the case with the Cruciform Inscription of Maništūšu, anachronisms in the text mark the composition out as later than it purports to be. Following the formulae which name the letter's addressee and sender the text itself opens with the phrase umma ana narê, an expression that also appears in a probably genuine letter of Nebuchadnezzar I.

Type
Research Article
Information
IRAQ , Volume 56 , 1994 , pp. 135 - 148
Copyright
Copyright © The British Institute for the Study of Iraq 1994 

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References

1 For a review of the contents of the library see ibid., p. 1491. Texts identified since that note was written include manuscripts of Enūma eliš VII, EAE XX, and the Šamaš Hymn. On the Atra-ḫasīs tablets see further our provisional notes in BiOr 49 (1992), 759–61Google Scholar. For the excavations see in addition al-Jadir, Walid, “Le quartier de l'É.babbar de Sippar (Sommaire des fouilles de 1985–1989, 8–11èmes campagnes)”, in Meyer, L. De and Gasche, H., Mésopotamie et Elam (CRRA 36, Ghent, 1991), pp. 193–6Google Scholar; cf. NABU 1987/55. His plan of the excavations at the temple shows the chamber which housed the library lying between the courtyards of Šamaš and Aya. On the temple buildings see now George, A. R., Babylonian Topographical Texts (OLA 40), pp. 215–20Google Scholar, and Joannès, Francis, “Les temples de Sippar et leur trésors à l'époque néo-babylonienne”, RA 86 (1992), pp. 159–84Google Scholar, especially pp. 162 f. The tablets are published by kind permission of the University of Baghdad, Department of Archaeology, and the Directorate of Antiquities and Heritage. Our work on the Sippar Library has been aided by the British School of Archaeology in Iraq, whose financial support we gratefully acknowledge. We also express our thanks to Professor W. G. Lambert for reading this article and pointing out our shortcomings. Views expressed are, of course, the responsibility of the authors.

2 Two further examples of the genre in the Sippar library are the text that used to be known as the “Weidner Chronicle”, now identified as a bogus letter of a king of Isin (see Iraq 52, pp. 1–13 CrossRefGoogle Scholar); and a long letter of Kurigalzu // BM 82684 + 82685 (which, contrary to Iraq 52, p. 149 1 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, is in fact already published, though unjoined, by Wiseman, D. J., BSOAS 30 (1967), pp. 495–504 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; cf. Borger, R., HKL II, p. 324 Google Scholar)

3 See the note on 1. 2

4 The title šākin ṭēm māti (1. 1) is the most obvious anachronism. According to Brinkman, J. A., Post-Kassite Babylonia, pp. 307 fGoogle Scholar, “the office of šākin ṭēmi originates in the Kassite period. Up until the middle of the ninth century, the šākin ṭēmi seems to have been a rather minor provincial official… A possible variant of this office, šākin ṭēm(i) māti, occurs several times in Babylonia between the late twelfth and the late ninth centuries.” In the later NB period šākin ṭēmi was a conventional Babylonian term for the governor of a province: see Frame, G., Babylonia 689–627 B.C., pp. 225 f.Google Scholar (after 850 B.C. according to CAD Š/1, p. 161 Google Scholar). Also anachronistic are the exalted epithets lavished on Marduk, which include “king of the gods” and attribute to him the creation of gods and mankind, and the determining of their destinies (11. 12 ff.). This supreme status was achieved by Marduk long after the reign of Samsu-iluna, officially, at least, in the time of Nebuchadnezzar I (see Lambert, W. G., “Studies in Marduk”, BSOAS 47 (1984), pp. 1–9 CrossRefGoogle Scholar). Finally, the title šar kiššati, “king of the world”, or šar kiššat [ … ] (either is possible in 1. 3), looks suspiciously late. The former is used by Babylonian kings only from the fourteenth century (specifically from Kurigalzu: Seux, M. J., Epithètes, pp. 310 f.Google Scholar); expansions of this, such as šar kiššat kibrāti, šar kiššat nišī and šar kiššat malkī, are rare even then. Instead Samsu-iluna prefers the traditional šar kibrāt arba'im, “king of the four quarters”. It is true that he adopts the ancient title l u g a l k i ški. a, “king of Kiš” ( Frayne, D., RIME 4, pp. 384 Google Scholar, 5–6; 389, 4), but in our view this is taken with particular allusion to his special patronage of this town, as witnessed by the rebuilding of its walls and ziqqurrats commemorated in the names of his years 22 and 24 and the associated building inscriptions (ibid., pp. 383–8). For a different view see Jeyes, U., Old Babylonian Extispicy, pp. 47 ff.Google Scholar, who argues that Samsuiluna's use of the title in a version of the name of his twentieth year, recording the suppression of the great revolt led by Ešnunna, was “a political declaration: ‘Samsuiluna, king of the whole world’.”

5 See the note on 1. 4.

6 Cf. Neriglissar's apparent reorganization of the senior staff of E-anna at Uruk, discussed by Sack, R. H., ZA 66 (1976), pp. 290 fCrossRefGoogle Scholar. For a case study documenting the close involvement of the crown in the affairs of the same temple see Frame, G., “Nabonidus, Nabû-šarra-uṣur, and the Eanna Temple”, ZA 81 (1991), pp. 37–86 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On the problem of royal interference in temple affairs, and relations between the king and the temples in general, see further Danda-mayev, M., “State and temple in Babylonia in the first millennium B.c.”, in Lipinski, E. (ed.), State and Temple Economy in the Ancient Near East II (OLA 6), pp. 589–96Google Scholar.

7 See Livingstone, A., Mystical Works, pp. 151 ffGoogle Scholar.

8 “The Cruciform Monument”, JEOL 20 (1968), pp. 50–70 Google Scholar, quotation from p. 50. The genre to which the text belongs is examined by Longman, Tremper III, Fictional Akkadian Autobiography (Winona Lake, 1991)Google Scholar, especially pp. 79–83.

9 Sollberger, loc. cit., pp. 52 f.; for the “treasury or museum” of E-babbarra which in LB times housed the Cruciform Monument and other antiquities, local and foreign, see the inventory compiled by Walker, C. B. F. in his article “Hormuzd Rassam's excavations for the British Museum at Sippar in 1881–1882”, in Meyer, Léon De (ed.), Tell ed-Dēr I (Leuven, 1980), pp. 93–114 Google Scholar, esp. pp. 111 f.

10 Si 3 ( Thureau-Dangin, F., RA 1 (1910), p. 180 Google Scholar) +“Ni 1288” was excavated by V. Scheil at Sippar: see Sollberger, loc. cit., pp. 51 f. BM 78290 (CT 44 1) was also thought by Sollberger “in all probability” to hail from this city (there is some question as to whether the NB tablets in this collection, purchased by E. A. Wallis Budge as part of the lot accessioned as Bu 88-5-12, come from Sippar or Babylon, but the former seems most likely: see Walker's, C. B. F. discussion in Leichty, E., Catalogue VIII, pp. xiv–xvii)Google Scholar.

11 Reading lū uqqi (waqûm II/1) with Thureau-Dangin, , King, , Gelb, and Soden, von (now also AHw, p. 1461)Google Scholar, against Sollberger's lū ukīn (u 9-kin x: see JEOL 20, p. 68 Google Scholar).